HKU POP SITE releases the latest ratings of CE Tung Chee-hwa and Principal Officials <br>under the accountability system, as well as people's satisfaction with the freedom of the press and their appraisal of the credibility of the news media in Hong KongBack

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, as well as people's satisfaction with the freedom of the press, and their latest appraisal of the credibility of the news media in Hong Kong. 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 this schedule, the date and time of our next release will be September 17, 2002, Tuesday, at 2 pm, the latest results on people's ethnic identity will be released.

As regards the latest figures released today, CE Tung Chee-hwa's rating has struck its first rebound after dropping for 4 consecutive times since early July. Tung's rating registered in early September (September 2-5) was 47.7 marks, a slight rise of 0.7 marks from that of mid-August, but such increase was statistically insignificant. Meanwhile, the popularity ratings of CS Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and FS Antony Leung Kam-chung were 62.7 and 55.4 marks respectively. Compared with the results registered in early August, the rating of Tsang has a significant increase of 1.3 marks, while Leung's rating has stayed virtually unchanged, though 0.1 mark lower. On the other hand, the popularity rating of SJ Elsie Leung Oi-sie has decreased slightly from that of early August by 1.0 mark to become 49.1 marks, yet the drop was statistically insignificant.

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, 9 out of 11 Directors of Bureaux can be meaningfully discussed in this survey, and the two groups have been listed separately in our summary tables. According to our latest findings, the three most popular officials were Secretary for Security Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, Secretary for the Environment, Transport and Works Sarah Liao Sau-tung and Secretary for Education and Manpower Arthur Li Kwok-cheung, attaining 62.4, 59.8 and 56.5 marks respectively. Secretary for Economic Development and Labour Stephen Ip Shu-kwan and Secretary for Housing, Planning and Lands Michael Suen Ming-yeung ranked fourth and fifth, with popularity ratings of 55.3 and 54.6 marks respectively. The remaining four ranks went to Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food Yeoh Eng-kiong, Secretary for Commerce, Industry and Technology Henry Tang Ying-yen, Secretary for the Civil Service Joseph Wong Wing-ping and Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury Frederick Ma Si-hang, attaining 54.3, 53.3, 51.2 and 43.2 marks respectively. Since the two remaining directors, Secretary for Constitutional Affairs Stephen Lam Sui-lung and Secretary for Home Affairs Patrick Ho Chi-ping, failed to reach the 50% benchmark recognition rate, their ratings are not taken as representative.

As regards people's satisfaction with the freedom of the press in Hong Kong, the latest figures registered in mid-August (August 14-19) showed that 56% were satisfied, 17% expressed dissatisfaction, while 22% said "half-half", fairly similar to those obtained in mid-May. As for the credibility rating of the news media in general, on a scale of 0-10, the latest figure registered in mid-August was 5.76 marks, representing a significant decline of 0.25 mark from that of mid-May.

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 errors of the ratings of CE, CS, FS and SJ are plus/minus 1.4, 1.0, 1.2 and 1.4 marks respectively, while those of the ratings of Directors of Bureaux with recognition rates reaching 50% are less than plus/minus 1.6 marks. Besides, the sampling error of the rating of the credibility of the news media is plus/minus 0.10 mark, while that of 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.