Overview
The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) provides survey and census data through the StatsBank. While you can manually visit the website and download tables as Excel or CSV files, this approach becomes tedious for large projects or when you need to update data frequently. This guide shows you how to use R to retrieve data programmatically from the GSS StatsBank API, allowing you to automate data collection and maintain reproducible workflows.What You’ll Learn
This documentation will walk you through:- Setting up your R environment with the necessary packages
- Connecting to the GSS StatsBank API
- Navigating the API’s hierarchical structure to find tables
- Constructing queries to retrieve specific data
- Parsing and transforming the response into analysis-ready dataframes
About the API
The StatsBank API is built on PxWeb technology, a standard used by many statistical agencies worldwide. Think of the API like a file explorer on your computer:- Databases are the top-level folders (e.g., “PHC 2021 StatsBank”, “GLSS7”)
- Levels are subfolders within databases (e.g., “Water and Sanitation”, “Education”)
- Tables are the actual data files (ending in
.px)
The StatsBank website provides a built-in “API Query” option for any table, which you can use as a reference when constructing your own queries.
Example Use Cases
This approach is particularly useful when you need to:- Update dashboards or reports with the latest data automatically
- Retrieve multiple related tables for comparative analysis
- Integrate GSS data into automated workflows or applications
- Maintain version-controlled, reproducible data pipelines