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“Voices from the Hall – Should Citizens Support Civil Nomination?” 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 the issue of whether citizens should support civil nomination 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 the 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 citizens, 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.

Research Team Members

Director:
Robert Ting-yiu Chung,
Karie Ka-lai Pang

Research Executive:
Frank Wai-kin Lee

Data Analysts:
Edward Chit-fai Tai, Kelvin Chung-ho Yu, Kam-tat Leung, Jazz Ma, Felix Chi-hang Chan, Oskar Lai-ho Yau

Other Team Members:
Winnie Wing-yi Lee, Joyce Wai-man Chan, Jasmine Kin-wing Li, Cynthia Hiu-yan Tse, Kenneth Ka-shu Chan, Perseus Wing-fu Wong, Sam Tak-kim Lau

Details of the forum

Details of the “Voices from the Hall” were as follow:

Topic: Should Citizens Support Civil Nomination?
Date: 16 March 2014 (Saturday)
Time: 10 am to 12 noon
Venue: RTHK Studio 2

Guests:	Maria Wai-chu Tam (Member of the HKSASR Basic Law Drafting Committee)
	Chi-kong Cheung (Non-official member of the Executive Council)
	Audrey Yuet-mee Eu (Chairman, Civic Party)
	Ngok Ma (Associate Professor, Department of Government and Public Administration, CUHK)

Rundown:	09:15-10:00　Registration
	10:00-11:20　Debate
	11:20-11:25　Participants to fill in questionnaires
	11:25-11:45　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 from the venue to Kowloon Tong, Admiralty, Tsuen Wan and Tai Po were also provided by the organizer.
Note: Each participant received HKD$100 as a token of appreciation of their attendance.

Preparation work before the Forum

The Public Opinion Programme officially started the invitation process around 2 months before the Forum. A Hong Kong-wide random telephone survey has been conducted between mid January to early March. In the first round of calls, 340 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 7 March 2014, there was a confirmed list of 190 citizens. 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.

From 11 to 13 March 2014, the Public Opinion Programme conducted a third round of confirmation and around 160 citizens 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 (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, or submit their opinion to PopCon directly.

On the date of the debate, the organizer asked each participant to hand in the completed first round survey questionnaire upon 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 follows:

Q1. To what extent do you support or oppose using civil nomination as one of the nomination methods for the 2017 Chief Executive election by universal suffrage?
Q2. To what extent do you support the saying “The Nomination Committee shall ensure that the Chief Executive candidates will not confront the central government”?
Q3. Referring to the Nomination Committee, to what extent do you support or oppose the suggestion that “the Nomination Committee shall follow the current composition of the Election Committee and shall be composed by the four major sectors”?

Research Results

A total of 110 citizens attended the debate on that day. 108 of them completed and submitted the first and second round survey questionnaires. The Public Opinion Programme conducted the analysis based on these 108 people and announced the research results on the spot.

Research presentation (Chinese PDF available only)
Download dataset: “Voices from the Hall – Should Citizens Support Civil Nomination?” participants’ research result

Other Matters

Radio Television Hong Kong did a live broadcast of the “Voices from the Hall” forum at Radio 1 and simultaneously a live streaming at RTHK TV 32 and 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:

Activity Photos

To be uploaded