The HKU Public Opinion Programme (POP) releases its regular survey findings via its POP SITE every Tuesday starting todayBack

The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong today releases on schedule via its website the "HKU POP SITE" (http://hkupop.pori.hk) the latest survey figures on CE's rating and people's appraisal of Hong Kong's political, economic and social conditions. Starting today, the POP Site will release the results of our regular surveys every Tuesday at 2pm, except during public holidays, each time with a forecast of the items to be released in the next two weeks. The POP Site will review and adjust this operation regularly, readers are welcome to leave their comments here.

Because next Tuesday is a Chinese New Year holiday, the date of our next release will be February 19, 2002, Tuesday, at 2 pm. The result of our latest surveys on CE's rating, people's satisfaction with the HKSAR Government, its secretaries, and members of the SAR Executive Council in general, will be released.

According to the latest figures released today, CE's rating in mid-January is 54.5, exactly the same as that of half a month ago. This shows that the upward trend of CE's rating since December last year has become leveled. However, because the survey was conducted before CH Tung conducted his four consultation sessions with Election Committee members in his quest for the second term as CE, the effect of these sessions is yet to be seen.

Regarding people's appraisal of the local political, economic and social conditions, tracking surveys show that right after the handover, people were more concerned with Hong Kong's social and then economic conditions. Soon after the beginning of 1998, however, almost everyone's attention turned to the economy, and by the end of 2001, 75% said they were most concerned with the economic condition. This is the highest figure since this series of questions began in 1992 (and slightly higher than those registered in June and August 1998).

As to people's satisfaction in different areas, our latest figures (registered in early December 2001) show that there were 27%, 80%, and 44% of people dissatisfied with the current political, economic, and social conditions respectively. Those satisfied amount to 23%, 5%, and 22% respectively. On a macro level (please see the charts with per-poll figures), people's satisfaction with the local political conditions after the handover could be described as a triple split. Those satisfied, dissatisfied, and "half-half" take up about equal portions. As to people's appraisal of the economic condition, there is no doubt that people have been very negative about the economy, especially in mid-1998 and late 2001. Finally, regarding the social environment, those dissatisfied gradually increased from over 20% right after the handover to about 40%, and those satisfied dropped from over 50% to around 20% to 30%.

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. 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.