World Humanitarian Summit- try these resources on International Aid

One key area being covered by the 2016 conference is humanitarian aid financing.
Here are some resources for exploring and getting access to data

Financial tracking service

UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA). UN OCHA FTS contains humanitarian contribution data from donor governments and recipient agencies as well as information on specific pledges carried in the media, on donor websites, or quoted in pledging conferences.

International Development Statistics (IDS) online databases, Development Assistance Committee (DAC), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). These are available via the OECD ilibrary These databases comprise the DAC annual aggregates database (comprehensive data on the volume, origin and types of aid and other resource flows) and the Creditor Reporting System.  

CRS Aid Activity database aims to provide a set of readily available basic data that enables analysis on where aid goes, what purposes it serves and what policies it aims to implement, Data are collected on individual projects and programmes includes Gender programme data.

International Aid transparency Intiative
Seeks to improve the transparency of aid. The registry has lists and data from over 400 organisations, including charitable donations.

IATI is a voluntary, multi-stakeholder initiative that seeks to improve the transparency of aid, - See more at: http://www.aidtransparency.net/about#sthash.m8U3nbew.dpuf

IATI is a voluntary, multi-stakeholder initiative that seeks to improve the transparency of aid, - See more at: http://www.aidtransparency.net/about#sthash.m8U3nbew.dpuf

Global Humanitarian Assistance.
This programme provides objective, independent, rigorous data and analysis on humanitarian financing and related aid flows, Funding received from Canadian and UK government among others. Has reports on on state actor funding and more

  Sources of background papers/ reports articles discussing aid funding

Try these useful websites

ELDIS
Great site from the Institute of Development Studies where you can locate full text papers and reports covering all aspects of development studies.

Research4Development(R4D) a database containing information about research programmes supported by DFID. It contains many indepth case studies and evidence based reviews.

USAID Development Experience Clearinghouse which provides free access to over 134,000 technical and other reports relating to USAID funded projects.

Social Science sites of the week

Social Science sites of the week.
Here is our round up of new and interesting sites for social scientists 


2015 - Spending Review and Autumn Statement - try these free resources

The government published a joint Spending Review and Autumn Statement on 25th November

The official government website is a good starting point . It provides an explanation of the process.and contains the speeches and supporting documents
HM Treasury has supporting documents.
Office of Budget Responsibility has financial data and forecasts

A House of Commons briefing paper. gives detailed background on the context and aims of the review
See more on our blog posting http://alissresearch.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/2015-spending-review-and-autumn.html

Working household poverty is worse
According to the latest annual poverty and social exclusion report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation which provides data and analysis for the last 5 years . The Trussell Trust has also recorded rising foodbank usage Also this week analysis on lifetime wealth from IFS found that using data from the Wealth and Assets survey younger generations were likely to be less well off than their parents.
For more recent links to free onlne reports covering UK social policy, economics and more from think tanks see our blog at http://socialsciencecurrentwareness.blogspot.co.uk/
ISER is also conducting some interesting research into new ways of measuring poverty. Their blog links to a number of discussion papers.


European Data Portal
Launched this month a new resource developed by the European Commission offering free access to over 240,000 datasets from 28 European Nations. These are harvested from open government data from EU nations websites. It is possible to search or browse by category, records give source information, URLs and license terms. Datasets can often be exported in excel or xml formats. Eurostat provides access to official datasets from EU bodies and surveys

Want to find more free open access data portals?
Try this list from openinception it has mapped over 1600. Hover over the maps to get statistics on different nations. Then zoom in on individual areas to get direct links to individual websites. Some are national, some regional or local government Read this article to find out more.about the aims and process

Are women under-represented in the news?
Yes according to the latest Global Media Monitoring Project report which found that they represented only 25% of those heard read about of mentioned in the news 2015 . The same overall percentage as in 2010. The report gives finding s on news coverage and women journalists presenting the news in a variety of media worldwide.

For other sources on this see the IWMF Global report on the status of women in the media 2011 which examines their employment status in new organisations. Journalists.org has a useful collection of links to recent full text reports from a range of think tanks and monitoring groups.

Accountable Journalism site launched
New from the The Ethical Journalism Network and the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, University of Missouri. This free database has the full text of ethics codes covering the media from nations worldwide. There is also an extensive bibliography of books on media codes and accountability

Examining UK government performance
Just released this week from the Institute for Government the Annual Whitehall Monitor 2015. This provides statistics and visual data on government department size staffing impact and transparency. There are 163 data tables

Last month the Alliance for Useful Evidence released a new framework tool to measure government departments in how transparent their use of evidence is in policy making decisions.


Finally starting xmas shopping how about some suffragette badges from the Womens Library@lse flick photo album . Or how about a suffragette hat as advertised in the December 23, 1911 edition of the Vote womens Freedom League newspaper. The lse has just made available a podcast of a discussion with the director of the recent suffragette film

Open Access week- data for free!

Yesterday was world Statistics day.
to celebrate this explore some fabulous free data sources!
For World Wide coverage try UN Data this has all the major publications and series from the United Nations.

A real highlight are Human development data tables which focus on aspects of poverty and development

ILOSTAT from the International Labour Organisation has statistical datasets.on over 100 indicators from 230 nations worldwide.

Global Health Observatory from the WHO has coverage of health data

Eurostat has statistics from EU nations.covering a range of social, economic and political topics.

UK office for National statistics provides free access to recent data.  There are neighbourhood statistics for local authorities.