Deliberative Forum on Political ReformBack

The “Deliberative Forum on Political Reform” is jointly organized by Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) and the University of Hong Kong Public Opinion Programme (HKUPOP). It aims to encourage the public to deliberate through discussing complex and controversial public issues. The forum provides a chance for the public to gain deeper understanding of the details and discussion points on the political reform. The concept of this activity comes from the idea of “Deliberative Polling” created by the Stanford University in the US. 100 Hong Kong citizens are randomly selected to attend the deliberative forum. They listened to both affirmative and negative opinions from respective guests, and were given the opportunity to ask the guests questions on the spot. The organizer analyzed the change in public opinions collected before and after the debate. For the background information of Stanford University's “Deliberative Polling”, please refer to Deliberative Polling Page.

The activity is divided into two parts, which includes a representative sample of no less than 1,000 public people, and 100 people are invited to attend a debate entitled “Deliberative Forum on Political Reform”. For the details and results of the public sample, please access the page here.

The Public Opinion Programme officially started the invitation process 3 weeks before the Forum. A Hong Kong-wide random telephone survey has been conducted between 18 to 31 January 2010. In the first round of calls, 220 public persons show interest to attend the activity. This is followed by the second round of calls by the Public Opinion Programme. The calls are made according to the interviewees' age group (ie. 18 to 29, 30 to 49 and 50 or above) and their self-claimed social strata (summarized into upper, middle and lower class) to ensure participants are representative of the public. At 2 February 2010, there is a confirmation list of around 120 persons. Radio Television Hong Kong then mailed or emailed the invitation letter for the debate, the first round survey and the background information of the political reform to each participant, which included:

In between 4 and 5 February 2010, the Public Opinion Programme conducted the third round of telephone follow-up. Finally around 100 participants confirmed that they would attend the debate.

On the date of the debate, the organizer asks each participant to arrive at the venue by 2 pm and hand in the completed first round survey questionnaire. During the group discussion in the middle of the debate, the organizer asks each participant to fill in the second round survey questionnaire, which has the exact same content with the first one. The aim is to analyze the change of citizens' opinion before and after the debate. The survey is jointly designed by the Public Opinion Programme and Radio Television Hong Kong. All the operations, data collection and analysis are done independently by the

Public Opinion Programme without the interference of any other party. The survey questions are as follows:
Q1. Taking the overall society into consideration, do you think Hong Kong citizens should support the political reform?
Q2. In your personal opinion, should the Legislative council cancel the functional constituency?
Q3.What is your ideal year in having universal suffrage for the Chief executive?
Q4. What is your idea year in having universal suffrage for the Legislative Council?
Q5. To what extent do you think the government has been fighting for democracy for Hong Kong citizens?

Radio Television Hong Kong has recorded the entire debate and produced a radio programme. It was broadcasted at 8 to 10 am, 13 February 2010 at Radio 1.