HKU POP SITE releases the latest results of people's appraisal of the HKSAR Government, their most concerned problems and their satisfaction with the current political, economic and social conditionsBack

The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong today releases on schedule via the "HKU POP SITE" (http://hkupop.pori.hk) the latest results of people's appraisal of the HKSAR Government, their most concerned problems and their satisfaction with the current political, economic and social conditions. Our normal practice is to release the results of our regular surveys every Tuesday at 2 pm via our POP Site, except during public holidays. Starting from today, we will each time forecast the items to be released in the forthcoming week. We will review and adjust this operation regularly.

According to this schedule, the date and time of our next release will be June 25, 2002, at 2 pm, the latest ratings of CE Tung Chee-hwa and the policy secretaries, as well as the results of the HKSAR Anniversary Survey will be released.

According to the latest figures released today, regarding people's appraisal of the HKSAR Government's performance in early June (June 4 and 5), 44% of the respondents were dissatisfied, 24% were satisfied, 26% said "half-half", while 6% did not give a definite answer. Compared to the results of early May, the dissatisfaction figure has significantly increased by six percentage points while the satisfaction figure has dropped by three percentage points.

As regards people's most concerned problems, results in early June showed that 70% of the respondents were most concerned with economic problems, another 22% were most concerned with social problems, while only 3% attached their greatest concern to political problems. Compared with the results obtained in early March, the figure for social problems has increased by six percentage points while that for economic problems has dropped by six percentage points. The economic situation has remained to be respondents' most concerned area since December 1997, far beyond the other two areas.

Regarding people's satisfaction with the current political condition in early June, 26% of the respondents were satisfied, 29% were not, 23% said "half-half", while 23% did not give a definite answer. Compared to the results of early March, the satisfaction and dissatisfaction figures have respectively decreased and increased by seven percentage points.

Of the three areas of concern, people have become most dissatisfied with the economic condition since December 1997, with dissatisfaction figures fluctuating between 60% and 80% in general. Results in early June showed that 77% of the respondents were dissatisfied, 8% were satisfied, 11% said "half-half", while 4% did not give a definite answer. No significant changes were observed since early March.

As regards the social condition, results in early June revealed that 46% of the respondents were dissatisfied, 24% were satisfied, 26% said "half-half", while 4% did not give a definite answer. Compared to the results of early March, the dissatisfaction figure has increased significantly by eight percentage points, while the satisfaction figure has dropped by five percentage points.

The new survey reported in the POP Site today is a random telephone survey conducted by interviewers, targeting at Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong of age 18 or above. The sample size of the survey is over 1,000 respondents. At 95% confidence level, the sampling error all percentages is less than plus/minus 3 percentage points. 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 comment on the findings at this stage. 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.