HKU POP SITE releases the latest results of the four subjective social indicators, people's confidence in Hong Kong's future, China's future and "one country, two systems"Back

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 the four subjective social indicators on Hong Kong's degree of "democracy", "freedom", "prosperity" and "stability", as well as the latest findings on people's confidence in Hong Kong's future, China's future, and "one country, two systems". 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 November 12, 2002, Tuesday, at 2 pm, the latest ratings of CE Tung Chee-hwa and Principal Officials under the accountability system will be released.

According to the latest (October 13-16) figures released today, of the four subjective social indicators on Hong Kong's degree of "democracy", "freedom", "prosperity" and "stability", people were much more positive about the degree of freedom than the other three items. On a scale from 0-10, the latest score for freedom was 7.06 marks, while democracy scored 6.06 marks. Compared with the figures registered in early July, both ratings of freedom and democracy have slightly dropped by 0.08 and 0.05 marks respectively, which were not statistically significant. However, these two ratings have dropped for two consecutive times since early April, with accumulative decreases of 0.40 and 0.25 marks respectively. On the other hand, stability and prosperity scored 6.26 and 5.70 marks respectively, representing corresponding increases of 0.07 and 0.17 marks, the former of which was not statistically significant.

Meanwhile, according to the findings obtained in mid-October, 44% of the respondents were confident in Hong Kong's future, whereas 43% were not. The confidence level has increased by 3 percentage points from that of mid-August. Regarding people's confidence in the future of China, 82% expressed confidence, representing an increase of 4 percentage points from that of mid-August, and also much higher than the corresponding figure for Hong Kong's future. On the other hand, 51% of the respondents were confident in "one country, two systems", whilst 37% were not. The confidence level has decreased by 5 percentage points compared with the results obtained in mid-August.

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 of the social indicators is plus/minus 0.12 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.