Research Portfolio Post #6: Quantitative Data Sources

For my large-N research design, I aim to analyze the cyber power of countries. The Cyber Power Index (CPI) is one data set that offers a useful ranking system. The data set ranks countries’ power in terms of their cyber capabilities. The index uses indicators from four categories: “legal and regulatory framework, economic and social context, technology infrastructure and industry application.” [1] The index number is an interval data type because the score ranges from 1-100 with 100 being the most favorable cyber power score. This index is useful for my research because it is a thorough compilation of 39 statistical indicators that encompasses the complexity of the ways in which cyber impacts state power.

The CPI encompasses a variety of indicators that make up the index number. These indicators are broken up into four themes and then an average of the score for each country in these conceptual themes is computed to give the index score. The legal and regulatory theme includes indicators such as the international cyber-security commitments indicator which is a nominal data set that measures whether a country has signed an international agreement to legislate cyber-security. There is also an ordinal data indicator for the existence of a cyber-security plan. The economic and social context theme includes interval data sets such as the expected years of education and research and development expenditure as a percentage of GDP. The technology infrastructure and the industry application categories include measurements of internet capacity in interval data sets.

For my own research, I can use the overall cyber power index or one of the specific power categories such as the Economic and Social Context or the Legal and Regulatory framework. I could use these themed indices to specifically operationalize my dependent variable to gain a better understanding of how other factors correlate with economic cyber power or cyber governance power.

In this data set, only 19 countries are covered. These countries were selected because they are all members of the G20. The size of the sample is a limitation of this data because it is smaller for the typical large-N research analysis. This sample also does not include third world countries which limits the scope of my research analysis. There are no African countries included in this data set which limits its ability to convey global patterns.

[1] Booz Allen Hamilton, Cyber Power Index, Index (Economic Intelligence Unit, 2011), accessed October 8, 2018, https://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/cybersecurity-capacity/system/files/EIU%20-%20Cyber%20Power%20Index%20Findings%20and%20Methodology.pdf.