Statistical data

According to Montanyà (2005), to be able to use statistical data, they have to be comparable. For this reason, there are organisations that have written indicators or elements from which data will be collected, as well as the criteria for their collection. These include:

The agencies or statistical sources are organisations which collect, process and distribute data. They specialise in thematic or geographical areas:

The Catalan Office for National Statistics collects official statistical data about demographics, the economy, society and Catalonia. It also provides a list of EU Indicators with which to compare Catalonia, Spain, the Euro Zone and the EU. The section entitled Other websites collects links to other data collection agencies and other resources of interest.

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In terms of Spain, the Office for National Statistics is responsible for coordinating the Administration's many data collection offices that form part of the Inventory of Statistical Operations of the Central State Administration, as well as data from regional agencies, such as IDESCAT.

Consultations can be made regarding statistics collected about physical surroundings and the environment, demographics and population, society, the economy, science and technology, agriculture, industry, energy and construction and services. All the information can be consulted separately or jointly from the INEbase database. It is worth mentioning that certificates concerning statistical data are also issued.

Another Spanish statistical data collection agency is the Centre for Sociological Research (CIS), which is primarily responsible for conducting surveys and analysing the results obtained.

The European Statistics System is coordinated by the European Office for Statistics. This agency collects statistical data from all over the European Union and also from each agency in the member countries. The data obtained can be consulted at Eurostat. It includes other databases, such as COMEXT about External Trade and Production.

In international terms, there are a number of organisms that compile statistics. These include the UN. The information is contained in the Undata database. From the homepage, you can access the agencies in each country. It also allows you to make a joint search in different databases, such as: World Tourism Indicators (WTO), World Telecommunications Indicators Data (ITU), part of the data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), data about childhood, (UNICEF), etc.

Alternatively, you can consult some of the OECD data on its website. The OECD Factbook, which is published every year, can also be downloaded. Other data directories published on development, technology and the economy can be found in libraries, such as the UOC's Virtual Library.

Another organisation which compiles statistics is the World Bank. Its open data collection can be found at Data World Bank. It collects data from some 300 indicators from over 200 different countries in the following areas: agriculture and rural development, infrastructures, aid, employment and social subsidies, the economy and external debt, poverty, education, the private sector, energy and mining, the public sector, environment, science and technology, finance, social development, healthcare and urban development. The fact that these can be consulted openly responds to the Open Data Initiative of the World Bank.

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Apart from agencies, companies, associations and the media also compile statistics based on their own data or surveys. These tend to be specialist data in terms of subject matter and geographical location.

Economic and business data can be consulted in the Factiva Reuters database, as they are often not free to access on the web.

Alternatively, for certain studies it may also be interesting to consult articles on statistical and economic data. These can be found in databases such as Econlit.

Lately, the Open Access trend that promotes open and free access to knowledge is also committed to having open-source data depositories which are the result of research. This is what Tim Berners Lee calls Linked Data. This concept includes the statistical data mentioned above, but goes further and includes all types of data.

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