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“Voices from the Hall – Should citizens support the decisions of the National People’s Congress on the Universal suffrage of Chief Executive?” 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 the decisions of the National People’s Congress on the Universal suffrage of Chief Executive 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 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, Johnny Chi-chiu Yiu, Oskar Lai-ho Yau, Sam Tak-kim Lau

Other Team Members:
Winnie Wing-yi Lee, Joyce Wai-man Chan, Jasmine Kin-wing Li, Kenneth Ka-shu Chan, Stanley Cho-leung Chu, Kenny Shing-kwan Chan

Details of the forum

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

Topic: Should citizens support the decisions of the National People’s Congress on the Universal suffrage of Chief Executive?
Date: 27 September 2014 (Saturday)
Time: 10 am to 12 noon
Venue: RTHK Studio 1

Guests:	Priscilla Mei-fun Leung (Legislative Councilor, Business and Professionals Alliance for Hong Kong)
	Wing-ching Shih (Member of the Concern Group for Public Opinion on Constitutional Development/ Centaline Property Agency Founder)
	Alan Kah-kit Leong (Legislative Councilor, Civic Party)
	Joseph Yu-shek Cheng (Convenor, Alliance for True Democracy)

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 1 month before the Forum. In the first round of calls, 192 citizens showed interest to attend the activity. 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. Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) 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. The Public Opinion Programme then conducted the final confirmation one week before the debate, and a confirmed list of 154 people who would attend the debate was finalized on 25 September 2014.

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 follow:

Q1. Taking the overall society into consideration, do you think Hong Kong citizens should support the decisions of the National People’s Congress on the universal suffrage of Chief Executive?
Q2. In your personal opinion, to what extent do you support or oppose the decisions of the National People’s Congress on the universal suffrage of Chief Executive?
Q3. In your opinion, the chance of passing the political reform proposal in LegCo is:
Q4. If the LegCo vetoes the political reform proposal in the end, who should bear the greatest responsibility?

Research Results

A total of 100 citizens attended the debate on that day. All of them completed and submitted the first and second round survey questionnaires. The Public Opinion Programme conducted the analysis based on these 100 people and announced the research results on the spot.

Research presentation (Chinese PDF available only)
Download dataset: “Voices from the Hall – Should citizens support the decision of the National People’s Congress on the Universal Suffrage of Chief Executive?” participants’ research result (to be uploaded)

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