HKU POP SITE releases the latest ratings of CE Tung Chee-hwa and Principal Officials under the accountability systemBack

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 ratings of CE Tung Chee-hwa and Principal Officials under the accountability system. POP's normal practice is to release the results of our regular surveys every Tuesday at 2 pm via our POP Site, except during public holidays, each time with a forecast of the items to be released in the forthcoming week. We will review and adjust this operation regularly.

According to our schedule, the date and time of our next release will be August 6, 2002, Tuesday, at 2 pm, the latest figures of the four subjective freedom indicators on Hong Kong's freedom of "speech", "press", "publication", and "procession and demonstration" will be released.

According to the survey findings released today, CE Tung Chee-hwa's rating registered in mid-July (July 10-15) was 50.1, a drop of 1.8 marks when compared with that of early July. The figure was also the lowest since mid-November last year. Meanwhile, the popularity ratings of CS Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and FS Antony Leung Kam-chung were 63.0 marks and 59.2 marks respectively, representing significant drops of 4.7 and 2.0 marks from those registered in late June. The popularity rating of SJ Elsie Leung Oi-sie, on the other hand, has increased by 1.3 marks to become 50.5.

As regards the popularity ranking of Directors of Bureaux, because it is POP's long established practice not to treat ratings of persons with less than 50% benchmark recognition rate as representative, only 4 out of 11 Directors of Bureaux can be meaningfully discussed in this survey, and they have been listed separately in our summary tables. According to our latest finding, Secretary for Security Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee topped the list with a support rating of 61.9 marks, which was a drop of 4.0 marks from that of late June. Secretary for Economic Development and Labour Stephen Ip Shu-kwan and Secretary for Housing, Planning and Lands Michael Suen Ming-yeung came second and third, attaining 57.0 marks and 55.1 marks respectively, but also dropped by 5.6 and 1.6 marks when compared with those in late June. Meanwhile, Secretary for the Civil Service Joseph Wong Wing-ping received the lowest rating of 50.6 marks, a big drop of 7.9 marks from that of late June. Since the remaining directors failed to reach the 50% benchmark recognition rate, their ratings are not representative. All in all, the recognition rate of almost all Directors have dropped, indicating that people's readiness to rate the Principal Officials has dropped weeks after the list was announced, resulting in more people giving indefinite answers.

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 errors of the ratings of CE, CS, FS and SJ are plus/minus 1.4 marks, 1.0 mark, 1.2 marks and 1.4 marks respectively, while that of the ratings of Directors of Bureaux with recognition rates reaching 50% is less than plus/minus 1.6 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 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.