Greek Election Opinion Polls

Here is an attempt to collect and digitise all the opinion poll results, as presented in national media, for the forthcoming election on September 20th 2015.

List of Data Sources

I have been working on a project to create a searchable file containing active links for data sources. I have compiled a basic Google Spreadsheet which I share online for anyone interested. The data sources included cover a wide range of statistical themes. It has been quite effective in my work as I find it especially hard to navigate across multiple databases and memorise the location of variables of interest. Apparently, the entries are primarily influenced by my knowledge and personal research interests.

You are welcome to access/share the document online and download it for personal use. 

I urge users to leave comments if any errors, invalid links e.t.c. are detected.

Please, let me know if you wish to be granted with editing rights in order to add sources. 

Open Data Index

Open Knowledge Foundation in collaboration with country data experts and researchers has published the first ever index on Data Openness.

Procurement Data

Here is a list of a few Public Spending data on Contracts and Procurement:

Electoral and Party Databases

Data Visualisation Tools by the Guardian Datablog

SOURCE OF ORIGINAL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/mar/28/data-visualisation-tools-free

Just starting out in visualising your data? Looking for something simple to use? This is where we go

The Wikileaks war logs: every death recorded. Get Bigger versionWhat data visualisation tools are out there on the web that are easy to use - and free? Here on the Datablog and Datastore we try to do as much as possible using the internet's powerful free options.That may sound a little disingenuous, in that we obviously have access to the Guardian's amazing Graphics and interactive teams for those pieces where we have a little more time - such as this map of public spending (created using Adobe Illustrator) or this Twitter riots interactive.

But for our day-to-day work, we often use tools that anyone can - and create graphics that anyone else can too.

So, what do we use?

Parliamentary Informatics - UPDATE 1

Few days ago I had posted a processed version of the Wikipedia article on Parliamentary Informatics (can be found here). The term is meant to define all the sources of information that help the civic society to monitor and assess the work of the public elected officials.

Since my first post I have discovered two additional attempts to enlist by country all the civic society initiatives to monitor public bodies.

UPDATE 1: A thorough review on Parliamentary Monitoring Organisation by the World Bank Institute can be found here (pdf file)

UPDATE 2:A Google Spreadsheet is under construction (accessible here) where anyone can contribute with sources that is aware of so as to widen the range of sources for each country.

UPDATE 3: A fresh spreadsheet with Parliamentary Monitoring Organisations for Developing countries has been uploaded (here). The file includes all websites enlisted in Agora.

 

Tracking public bodies and private coorporations

The existence of a non countable number of public bodies and institutions and the even more chaotic amount of private firms and coorporations leads to the issue of who is who. The difficulty to detect the identity of each institution, its derivation and operations causes an issue of lack of transparency on the first hand and another for researches who cannot easily get access to the 'correct' institution for their work.

Assuming that i want to get electricity data for OECD countries. It will be difficult to be aware of all the various OECD electricity companies that issue their data, e.t.c.

Two sites attempt to illuminate on the aspect by providing useful details and information on the identities of the public institutions and private companies.

Public Bodies: Provides identity information about public institutions worldwide. Launched in Summer 2011 is constantly updated with new data on institutions that operate in a good range of countries.

Open Coorporates: The site which allow user to extract information and trace the derivation of a constantly updated number of companies.

International Statistical Sites - by Harvard Center of International Development

Stable Link of the Catalog's source: http://www.cid.harvard.edu/ciddata/stats.html

 

I REPRODUCE THE SOURCES

Google Ngram Viewer

Google Ngram Viewer is a section of Google I discovered yesterday and i was fully unaware of its existence before. Ngram allows any user to perform chronological trend searches on keyword for their frequency of use on the internet.

These kind of searches and this trend information on keywords, terms, names, locations, etc, might be useful for qualitative research on political events/concepts and their popularity (frequency of online queries) over the years.

I certainly advice you to experiment with the platform, and who knows you might get inspired for new researches by it!

Dealing with data

Having acquired a small experience from dealing with small and medium size datasets, i should admit that most of the data i have encountered have originated from Greece where the art of econometrics is still premature, hence the data quality is disputable and the time series tend to be quiet messy.

Given the fact that datasets derived from various sources most of the times need to be 'beautified' and processed so as to be useful and interpretable, softwares that allow and ease the task of purifying the data are quiet useful.

Recently, i encountered the FREE software provided by GOOGLE called Google Refine. Its goal is exactly to clear and purify the datasets so as to constitute a database that will be user-friendly and more interpretable by the user. Google Refine which I openly recommend as the main pre-analysis software that I use to smooth the data and fix errors before applying econometric methods and analyses, tends to be my newest friend in the daily data treatment adventures. It works within the google Chrome browser without the need to upload any data online, hence preserving the privacy and the secrecy of any research.

Having purified the datasets, I have been taught to use STATA (I just bought v.12) as my statistical processing software. I think that Stata is the most complete, powerful, and dynamic statistical programme in the market.

Parliamentary Informatics

I reproduce part of the text from wikipedia (stable link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_informatics)

Parliamentary informatics is the application of information technology to the documentation of legislative activity.

Sources of Parliamentary Information by Country:

United Nations

The website Undemocracy gives hyperlinked access to transcripts of the General Assembly and Security Council of the United Nations, with parsed voting records.

Australia

OpenAustralia.org is a community-funded site which was launched in June 2008 and automatically collects and publishes in an easy-to-read format the transcripts of all Australian Government House of Representatives and Senate debates, questions, discussions and notices. OpenAustralia.org also made available the Register of Senators' and Members' Interests online for the first time ever in Australia.

Austria

The National Council of Austria is covered by meinparlament.at

Data Archives Worldwide

Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS) offers an explanatory map with sources of data archives worldwide.

The map can be accessed on http://www.esds.ac.uk/findingData/map3.asp

 

Open Data Initiatives Mapping

I managed to retrieve two exceptional maps (the one is currently under open construction) where all the worldwide open data initiatives are depicted:

 

• CTIC Open Data Map A finished dynamic map constantly updated containing supra/sub and national open data sources


• Open Data Census (by Tim MacNamara): An attempt to depict all the open data sources (under construction)

Open Data - Catalogs and Projects

Given the enormous incline in the promotion of the use of open data  i found useful to list a few main portals where open data can be accessed and current projects that make use of open data can be found.

List of websites that contain catalogues with sources and projects of open data:

• TheDataHub: The best tool for searching open data sets


• Open Government Data: Useful, constantly updated catalogue of open data sites


• Open Knowledge Foundation: An organisation for the promotion of open data regime. Contains lists of active projects


• DataCatalogs.org: Search for Open Datasets, Open Data Sites and Projects


• DataLibre.Ca: A list of Open Data Links and Resources from Canada (Contains International resources as well)


• PublicData.Eu: A European Initiative for gathering and distributing Open public data and promoting projects


• Linking Open Government Data (LOGD): Thorough database with advanced search options

Other Data Catalogues

Links of Data catalogues similar to mine. They can be helpful when everything else doesn't work!

 

• RadStats: Radical Statistics Catalogue (various international data sources)


• LOD2 Project: List of Open Data (various international data sources)


• NBER: The national bureau of economic research (data used in published journals)


• OpenGovernment: A project to promote transparency by opening access to all datasets (mostly EU)


• DataHub: Open Data project like OpenGovernment

Worldwide Data

The list will include data sources that contain datasets from numerous country of the world. For country specific data please check the other categories of the site.

• UK Data Service: An attempt to merge various datasets from different sources into one platform. Includes all types of data.


• ACRN: Anticorruption Research Network Databases contain corruption related data.


• TI: Transparency International - Corruption Indeces.


• UN: Databases from the United Nations.


• OECD: Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development Databases.


• OECD-Library: Contains all the stats, graphs, tables used in the OECD publications.


• ILO: International Labour Organisation.


• IMF: International Monetary Fund. All the indebted nations are certainly in here!


• World Bank: Large international datasets.


• The Economist: Useful financial and economic data from the leading magazine.


• Economist Intelligence Unit: Financial Data and Dynamic Forecasts can be retrieved freely or purchased.


• PippaNoris Data: Data from the JFK Harvard School of Government with political datasets.


• DataBankProject: The oldest living panel data since 1815. Can be retrieved by emailing the foundation.


• Guardian: The data repository of the british newspaper.


• UNESCO: Cultural, Educational and Social Data.


• World Bank Financial Data: A beta version of the latest datasets of the world bank.


• WHO: World Health Organisation Statistics.


• RoperCenter: International Public Opinion Datasets and more.


• Google Data Lab


• Google Fusion Tables


• YouGov: The revolutionary panels (unfortunately only archive reports are available).


• Index of Economic Freedom: The well known index of free market performance by the conservative Heritage Foundation.


• World Values Survey: A survey quantifying cultural aspects of societies.


• Freedom House Indeces: Data on Freedom of the world, press, net.


• Open Budget Index:  Independent, comparative, regular measure of budget transparency and accountability.


• Rule of Law Index: Assess a nation’s adherence to the rule of law.


• Global Financial Integrity: Information regarding illicit financial transactions.


• Global Integrity Report: Data on Practices in governance and assessment of the public sector.


• Global Assessment Portal: Exceptional Guide Containing indicators for good governance characteristics.


• Polity Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions since 1800.


• Birch Index of Electoral Malpractice


• World Bank Governance Indicators: Measures of Quality in Governance for 213 Economies since 1996.


• Social Policy Data: compilation of datasets on social policy systems, tax systems, public opinion, quality of govornance and political indicators.


• Public Administration Data: unique data set on the structure and behaviour of public administration, based on a web survey. of 973 country experts from 126 countriesaround the world.


• Graduate Institute of Geneva: Contains an interesting list of datasets of macroeconomic origin.


• Aid Data: Search for Foreign Aid data.


• Right to Information Index: A comparative index examining the openness to infrmation for 80+ countries.


• Joint External Debt Hub: Free Database with debt related datasets gathered from the IMF, World Bank, BIS, and OECD.


• Sustainable Governance Indicators: OECD Cross National Survey of Governance. Measurement of Equality and Freedom.


• Bribe Payer Index: The 2011 index with the private supply side of corruption, published by the Transparency International.


• Human Development Index trends


• Gap Minder: A wide list of world health related datasets


• Buzz Data: An interesting site that attempts to promote the use of data for storytelling and research. Good collection of various datasets too!


• RevenueWatch: Dataset on transparency of mineral, oil, and gas exporting countries.


• Data Gov: Graphical Representation of Data and option to extract the datasets


• Factual: Unique data sets ranging from health,education, and entertainment.


• DataMarket: An Icelandic treasure in data exploring and sharing. Searches through many different data providers.


• Infochimps: Another attempt to offer a unified searching platform for data


• The DataHub: The most extensive open data initiative


• EH.net: Rich historical time series for a variety of countries


• DoingBusiness: Business related data. Easiness to start a business, taxation, credit details etc per country


• Ponemon: Data and Internet security related information. What is the cost of data for businesses?


• Survey Question Bank: Search for major surveys conducted by various national and internation organisations


• Internation Social Survey Programme: Archives and data from a wide range of surveys


• PRS: Political Risk Services


• Better Life Index: Published by the OECD categorising coutnries by aspects of good life


• Publish What You Fund Index: Country indicators on aid transparency


• OpenSpending.org


• Quality of Government: Compiled by the Quality of Government Institute


• Quandl: Datasets for Finance and Economics


• Archigos: Rich Data Base on Political Leaders from 1875-2004 for 150+ countries