Websites for Research

These are a few websites I could use as an internet research base for my project.

http://hdr.undp.org/en/

The Human Development Index looks like it could be a great resource for my project. The 2010 Human Development Report features a 1970-2010 HDI trends analysis, identifying ’ top mover’ countries that have improved most in HDI terms over the past 40 years, using the original HDI indicators for health, education and income. It also enables you to build your own index for the different areas affecting human development such as health, poverty and education.


http://www.gapminder.org/

Gapminder World is an amazing website which provides you with data trends worldwide. Areas that can be studied from the graphs freely available include life expectancy and education. This graph maps the adult literacy rates of people over 15 in every country against the country’s GDP. The population of the country is shown in the size of the circle so this variable can be accounted for. You are also able to see the trend over a number of years. Maybe I could look at changes in literacy rates through history? Or if a specific country, such as China, has changed so much in terms of literacy rates and how this relates to its dramatic increase in GDP?

http://www.sil.org/

SIL International is an organisation that aims to encourage literacy all over the world. It ‘serves language communities worldwide, building their capacity for sustainable language development, by means of research, translation, training and materials development.

            I found that this website gave some good information about literacy’s effect on income. It suggests that income loss due to illiteracy does not just affect the individual but society at large.

‘According to the National Adult Literacy Survey, in the US alone, adult illiteracy carries an estimated price tag of more than $17 billion per year as a result of lost income and tax revenue, welfare, unemployment, crime and incarceration, and training cost for business and industry. This could suggest that the price tag for illiteracy at large is more than the cost of literacy.’

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education/

To come to conclusions about literacy’s effect on development, I need to look into the areas of education and the economy, in those countries/country I choose to study. I thought the BBC’s website might provide me with articles on education that would enable more depth to my research. However, I think it may be a limited source for research into other countries other than the UK.

http://www.unesco.org.uk/

‘The United Kingdom National Commission for UNESCO is the focal point in the UK for UNESCO-related policies and activities.The Commission is an independent civil society organisation which supports UNESCO’s work in the building of peace, the eradication of poverty, sustainable development and intercultural dialogue through education, the sciences, culture, and communication.’

UNESCO will hopefully be a good source for information about education around the world.