《Voices from the Hall – Deliberative Forum on 2017 CE Election Method》 Back

| Background | Details of the Forum | Preparation Works before the Forum | Research Results | Other Matters |

“Voices from the Hall – Deliberative Forum on 2017 CE Election Method” was jointly organized by Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) and Public Opinion Programme, the University of Hong Kong (HKUPOP). It aimed at encouraging the public to deliberate on 2017 CE election method through holding the forum. The concept of this activity is based on the idea of “Deliberative Polling” created by the Stanford University in the US. Around 100 Hong Kong citizens were randomly selected to attend the deliberative forum. The participants listened to both affirmative and negative opinions from respective guests, and were given the opportunity to pose questions to the guests on the spot. The organizer would then analyze 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.

This activity was divided into two parts, which included a public opinion survey with a representative sample of no less than 1,000 public people, and a debate entitled “Voices from the Hall” attended by around 100 people. For the details and results of the public sample, please access the page here.

Topic: “2017 Chief Executive Election Method”
Date: 5 May 2013 (Sunday)
Date: 5 May 2013 (Sunday)
Venue: Studio 2, Radio Television Hong Kong
Guests：	Fanny Chiu-fun, Law (Member of Executive Council/ Hong Kong Deputy to the National People’s Congress ) Tam Yiu-chung (Legislative Councilor, Chairman of DAB) Albert Chun-yan, Ho (Legislative Councilor, Democratic Party) Benny Yiu-ting, Tai (Initiator of the “OCLP” movement/ Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, HKU)
Rundown：	09:30-10:00　Registration
	10:00-11:20　Debate
	11:20-11:30　Participants to fill in questionnaires
	11:30-11:45　Feedback from participants
	11:45-12:00　Conclusion and announcement of poll results
Transport：Apart from participants who went to the venue by themselves, shuttle buses in Kowloon Tong, Admiralty, Tsuen Wan and Tai Po Market were also provided by the organizer.
Note: Each participant received HKD$100 as a token of appreciation of their attendance.

The Public Opinion Programme officially started the invitation process four weeks before the Forum. A Hong Kong-wide random telephone survey has been conducted between mid-April to early-May. In the first round of calls, around 300 citizens showed interest to attend the activity. This is followed by the second round of calls by the Public Opinion Programme. The calls were made according to the interviewees’ age group (i.e. 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 the representativeness of the participants. On 1 May 2013, there was a confirmed list of around 160 people. Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) then mailed or emailed the invitation letter for the debate, the first round survey and the background information to each participant.

In between 1and 3 May 2013, the Public Opinion Programme conducted the third round of confirmation and around 140 people confirmed that they would attend the event as scheduled.

In accordance with this activity, the Public Opinion Programme has launched a “POP App” for smartphone users, and constructed a feature page for “Voices from the Hall” at PopCon (http://popcon.hk) to collect opinions from netizens through online surveys and forums. People can now download the app from Google Play or iOS App Store to submit their opinion to PopCon directly.

On the date of the debate, the organizer asked each participant to arrive at 9am and hand in the completed first round survey questionnaire on his/her arrival. In the middle of the debate, the organizer asked each participant to fill in the second round survey questionnaire, which was exactly the same as the first one. The two questionnaires were used to analyze the change of citizens’ opinion before and after the debate. The survey was jointly designed by the Public Opinion Programme and Radio Television Hong Kong. All the operations, data collection and analysis were done independently by the Public Opinion Programme without the interference of any other party. The survey questions were as follow:

Q1. In defining the word “universal suffrage”, how important do you think the definition should follow the United Nations guidelines on universal suffrage?
Q2. In defining the word “universal suffrage”, how important do you think the definition should follow the Central government’s definition on universal suffrage?
Q3. According to the Basic Law, the Chief Executive shall be selected by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures. Do you think the nomination procedure conforms with the requirement of “broadly representative” if it follows the same nomination model as last term?

A total of 108 citizens attended the debate on that day. 107 of them completed and submitted the first and second round survey questionnaires. The Public Opinion Programme conducted the analysis based on these 107 people and announced the research results on the spot.

• Research presentation (Chinese PDF available only)

Radio Television Hong Kong did a live broadcast of the “Voices from the Hall” forum at Radio 1 and simultaneously a live steaming at its online broadcast station on that day. Besides, Radio Television Hong Kong also uploaded the clip of the entire debate onto the website, citizens can watch the archive at the following links:

• Event page
• Programme archive

• To be uploaded

| Background | Details of the Forum | Preparation Works before the Forum | Research Results | Other Matters |