The HKU Public Opinion Programme (POP) today releases its latest survey findings via its POP SITE, and will release its regular survey findings every Tuesday starting next monthBack

The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong today releases as scheduled via its website the "HKU POP SITE" (http://hkupop.pori.hk) the latest survey figures on CE's rating, people's satisfaction with the HKSAR Government and legislative councillors, and four subjective social indicators on Hong Kong's degree of democracy, freedom, prosperity, and stability. The "POP Site" has also decided to release its regular survey findings every Tuesday starting next month, except public holidays, each time with a forecast of the items to be released in the next two weeks. POP Site will review and adjust this operation regularly, readers are welcome to leave their comments here.

According to this schedule, the date of our next release will be February 5, 2001, Tuesday, at 2 pm. The result of our latest surveys on CE's rating, and people's appraisal of Hong Kong's political, economic and social conditions will be released.

Moreover, on January 29, 2001, Tuesday, at 2 pm, we will upload all single issues and combined volumes of our publication POP Express onto POP Site's "Archive", but we will not issue further notice on this matter. Moreover, to facilitate cross comparison between different studies, practically all research items released today have included opinion figures aggregated on a half-year basis.

According to the latest figures released today, CE's rating has steadily increased since December last year, after staying low for one month. The latest figure registered in early January is 54.5, which is significantly higher than those recorded in November and early December last year.

Regarding people's appraisal of the government's performance, dissatisfaction has apparently dropped since it peaked between September and November last year. Likewise, satisfaction figures have continued to increase since October. Our latest finding shows that 24% of the population are satisfied with the government's performance, but a considerably higher portion of 37% are dissatisfied.

As to the overall performance of Legislative Councillors, our latest finding shows that 18% are satisfied, 26% not, while 37% said "half half". The figures have remained quite stable in the last two months.

Finally, regarding the subjective indicators of Hong Kong's degree of democracy, freedom, prosperity, and stability, our tracking surveys show that people are much more positive about the degree of freedom than the other three items, with the latest score of 7.1. The latest score on perceived stability is 6.1, democracy 6.0, and prosperity 5.6, which is almost the lowest figure since the handover. On a macro level (please see the chart with half-year figures), all four indicators have dropped since the handover - "prosperity" most heavily, "stability" considerably, and "freedom" and "democracy" somewhat slightly.

All new surveys reported in the POP Site today are random telephone surveys conducted by interviewers, targeting at Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong of age 18 or above. The sample size of all surveys is over 1,000 respondents. At 95% confidence level, the sampling error of all percentages is less than plus/minus 3 percentage points, while that of Chief Executive's rating is less than plus/minus 1.4 marks, and that of various social indicators is less than plus/minus 0.12 marks. That means if we were to repeat a certain survey 100 times, using the same questions each time but with different random samples, we would expect 95 times getting a figure within the error margins specified. Shall anyone have any question regarding the research design of the surveys published in the POP Site, members of the POP Team will be happy to answer them, but we will not be able to provide additional comments. Such an arrangement would be reviewed when more resources are available. Please note that Dr CHUNG Ting-yiu Robert, Director of Public Opinion Programme, is solely responsible for the work published in the POP Site, which does not represent the stand of the University of Hong Kong.