HKU POP SITE releases a column article on the government's collation of submissions on Article 23 of the Basic LawBack

The "HKU POP SITE" (http://hkupop.pori.hk) of the Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong today releases in its "POP Column" an article entitled "Casting Doubts on the Compendium of Submissions". Written in both English and Chinese, and jointly by Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme at HKU, and Boris Sai-Tsang Choy, College Lecturer of the HKU SPACE Community College, the article dissected the government's approach in collating people's submissions in relation to Article 23 of the Basic Law. Five points of doubt were cast, and a number of suggestions were made for further analysis.

Chung and Tsang believed that the government's analyses of the submissions were based on unclear concepts and categorization schemes, which could be biased. After raising 5 points of doubt, the authors criticized "people from all walks of life, probably including the government itself, [for] confusing quality with quantity (of public opinion). They just take what they want."

According to the authors, since the government has already promulgated its stand on a number of issues, analysis of the submissions should better be conducted by truly independent consultants. The authors also suggested any person who is interested in cross-checking the government's work to simply draw a 5-10% random sample from the submissions, and then proceed to conduct an independent audit. Regarding the method of analysis, they proposed to use both "qualitative and quantitative" analyses in parallel. After listing 10 sets of variables for quantitative analysis, the authors also proposed to screen out the more substantive and comprehensive submissions, mainly coming from professionals and professional bodies, for qualitative analysis.

The copyright of the column article is entirely open, and anyone can re-print it in whole or in part. Please note that everything carried in the POP Site does not represent the stand of the University of Hong Kong. Dr Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, is responsible for everything posted in the POP Site, except for column articles which represent the stand of their authors.