Contact Information in DetailsBack


 

Sampling Design:

 
 

The target population of this survey is Hong Kong small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with presence in Mainland China. As suggested by the Hong Kong Computer Society, the contacts of such enterprises were extracted from the "Hong Kong Directory" available from the website <http://hkenterprise.com> maintained by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council by an "advanced search" with the following criteria:

 
 

Nature of business, product and service ─ All
Number of staff in Hong Kong ─ Non-manufacturing: 1-50
 Manufacturing: 1-100
Target market ─ China

 

The preliminary number of contacts obtained was 41,048. After filtering duplicated numbers, a total of 15,786 contacts remained. The remaining contacts were then randomly ordered by the computer to produce the final sampling frame, of which 3,080 were manufacturing companies, 12,706 belonged to other industries.

 
 

The survey was conducted between 30 January and 7 February 2003 during office hours (1000 to 1800 hours), a total of 504 eligible local SMEs were successfully interviewed through random telephone survey. Upon the suggestion of the Hong Kong Computer Society, 1 SME was eliminated from the sample because the number of employees in Mainland China reported was more than 10,000. The total number of successful sample became 503, and the overall effective response rate was calculated to be 86.8% (Table 1), with a standard error due to sampling less than 2.2%, meaning that at 95% confidence level, the sampling error of all percentages was no more than plus/minus 5 percentage points.

 
 
Table 1 Calculation of effective response rate

   Effective response rate
= Successful cases / (Successful cases + Incomplete cases + Refusal cases + Estimated refusal cases of eligible respondents*)
= 503 / {503 + 3 + 0 +117 [(503 + 3 + 0) / (503 + 3 + 0 + 297)]}
= 86.8%
 

* Figure estimated by known pro rata

 
 
Table 2 Detailed breakdown of contact information
   Frequency  Percentage
 Telephone numbers'/ Respondents' ineligibility confirmed 385  14.8% 
 Fax/ data line 6 0.2%
 Invalid number 46 1.8%
 Call-forwarding/ mobile/ pager number 24 0.9%
 Special technological circumstances 12 0.5%
 No eligible respondent 297 11.4%
     
 Telephone numbers'/ Respondents' eligibility not confirmed 1,026  39.4% 
 Line busy 10 0.4%
 No answer 750 28.8%
 Answering device 66 2.5%
 Call-blocking 1 0.0%
 Language problem 23 0.9%
 Interview terminated before the screening question 117 4.5%
 Others 59 2.3%
     
 Telephone numbers'/ Respondents' eligibility confirmed, but failed to complete the interview 690  26.5% 
 Appointment date beyond the end of the fieldwork period 673 25.8%
 Known respondent never available 10 0.4%
 Partial interview 3 0.1%
 Miscellaneous 4 0.2%
     
 Successful cases 503  19.3% 
 Total 2,604  100.0%