A Crazy Cyber World : Construction of a Composite Index for Measuring Child Online Protection (COPI)

On 17th November 2010, the international telecommunications union (ITU) launched a new Child Online Protection (COP) phase. This new phase aimed to encourage the development of national COP centers, awareness campaigns and community forums to create a safe environment for young users of the Internet. Over half a decade after launching the initiative with specific guidelines for the key actors, there is no manageable understanding of the sway of each nation’s efforts towards insistence on or compromise of the safety of the child online. The current paper presents a composite index measuring child online protection. More precisely, the paper presents the framework and methodology underpinning the child online protection index (COPI). The child online protection framework translates into the COPI, comprising four sub-indexes that measure the four key actors namely government/ policy makers, industry, parents/guardian/ educators and finally children. These four sub-indexes are divided into seven pillars and 39 indicators. The authors recommend series of diagnostic test to demonstrate the robustness of the new measure, and assess the degree of construct validity