PreambleBack


 
 

1. The Public Opinion Programme (POP) was established in June 1991 to collect and study public opinion on topics which could be of interest to academics, journalists, policy-makers, and the general public. POP was at first under the Social Sciences Research Centre, a unit under the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Hong Kong, and was transferred to the Journalism and Media Studies Centre in the University of Hong Kong in May 2000. In January 2002, it was transferred back to the Faculty of Social Sciences in the University of Hong Kong. POP provides quality survey services to a wide range of public and private organizations, provided that they allow the POP Team to design and conduct the research independently, and to bear the final responsibilities.

 
 

2. Agency for Volunteer Service (AVS) is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and developing volunteer service in Hong Kong over the past 30 years. To celebrate the International Year of Volunteers 2001, the IYV Steering Committee drew up specific plans to encourage and develop volunteerism, one of which was to carry out a comprehensive study in individual volunteering in Hong Kong. AVS undertook this project and commissioned the POP to conduct a "Study on Public's Reception and Perception of Volunteer Services" in May 2001. The study comprised three parts, namely, a quantitative telephone survey of the general public, another quantitative telephone survey of service recipients, and a qualitative study with two focus groups.

 
 

3. AVS has in the past conducted studies on volunteering on a limited scale in terms of scope or geographical distribution. This is the first full scale study on volunteering in Hong Kong, and the major areas of investigation are:

 
 

  • To map the profile of volunteers in terms of their socio-economic background and their contributions made;
  • To understand the motivations and barriers for volunteering in Hong Kong;
  • To understand the motivations and barriers facing local organizations in using volunteers;
  • To identify the service recipients and to study their evaluations of the service;
  • To examine the local volunteering environment regarding aspects like government policies/activities, public perceptions, attitudes and values related to volunteerism.

 

4. Specifically, the objectives of the first part of the study were to gauge the general public's experience of participating in volunteer work, their intention and reasons for future volunteering as well as their evaluation of the barriers and expectations of volunteering. The second part aimed at studying the organization representatives' experience of receiving volunteering service and their evaluation of existing volunteer provider agencies. The third part was conducted in the form of group discussions, which collected more in-depth opinions from volunteers and service recipients on the subject matter in order to improve the development of local volunteering.

 
 

5. For all parts of the study, the research instruments used, including questionnaires, discussion guides, were designed independently by the POP Team after consulting the client. Fieldwork operation, data collection and interpretation were also carried out independently by the POP Team.

 
 

6. The entire study was conducted between September 2001 and January 2002. The target population of the first telephone survey was all Cantonese-speaking residents in Hong Kong aged 15 or above, irrespective of whether they had volunteer experience prior to the interview. As for the second part, telephone interviews during office hours were used to capture representatives from local service recipients who had ever used volunteer service in the past. Whilst the qualitative part comprised two separate group discussion sessions with 32 volunteers and 8 organization representatives respectively.