HKU POP releases the latest social indicatorsBack

(1) POP will conduct instant survey on FS’s Budget Talk

As in previous years, the Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong will conduct an instant survey next Wednesday after the Financial Secretary John Tsang gives his Budget Talk. Results are due to be published the following day. Media which would like to sponsor the survey in order to obtain results that same evening please contact us as early as possible

(2) “PopVote Civil Referendum Project” kicks off again and calls for public donations

POP at the University of Hong Kong and Centre for Social Policy Studies at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University jointly held a press conference some time ago to introduce the future development of the “PopVote Civil Referendum Project”, as well as to invite donations of HKD800,000 from public to construct and enhance the e-Voting system. The general public can log onto the "Donate Now" page of the "PopVote" website (http://popvote.hk) and leave their contact information if they wish to make a donation.

POP interviewed 1,023 Hong Kong people between February 2 and 14 by means of a random telephone survey conducted by real interviewers. The survey finds that compared to 6 months ago, the ratings of all 5 core social indicators (namely, freedom, the rule of law, prosperity, stability and democracy) have gone down. Those with decrements beyond sampling errors include the ratings of “stability”, “rule of law” and “prosperity”, while “freedom” and “stability” have dropped to record low since October 2004, probably reflecting people’s dissatisfaction with the current social environment. As for the 7 non-core social indicators, 5 have gone down, among them, “degree of public order”, “degree of equality” and “degree of fairness” register significant decreases. As for the 10 freedom sub-indicators, 8 have gone down, with the freedom of “association” having dropped significantly over the 6 months, which warrants attention. In terms of absolute ratings, among the 10 freedom sub-indicators, only “freedom of press” and “freedom to strike” fail to reach 7 marks, meaning that people still consider Hong Kong to be quite free. In the area of rule of law, it is soothing to see the popularity of its representative figure Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma has gone up to reach a two-year high. Freedom and the rule of law are the core values and the cutting edges of Hong Kong society, they need to be constantly monitored and reflected on. The sampling error of rating figure of various indicators is below +/-0.20 marks while that of Geoffrey Ma is below +/-2.0 marks. The response rate of the survey is 65%.

POP today releases on schedule via the "POP SITE" the latest social indicators, include 5 core indicators, 7 non-core indicators, 10 freedom sub-indicators, 2 rule of law sub-indicators, and the rating of Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma Tao-li. All the figures have been weighted according to provisional figures obtained from the Census and Statistics Department regarding the gender-age distribution of the Hong Kong population in 2012 mid-year. Herewith the contact information for the latest survey:

[6] Errors are calculated at 95% confidence level using full sample size. “95% confidence level” means that if we were to repeat a certain survey 100 times, using the same questions each time but with different random samples, we would expect 95 times getting a figure within the error margins specified.

Herewith the latest figures of the 5 core social indicators:

[7] All error figures in the table are calculated at 95% confidence level. “95% confidence level” means that if we were to repeat a certain survey 100 times, using the same questions each time but with different random samples, we would expect 95 times getting a figure within the error margins specified. Media can state "sampling error of various ratings not more than +/-0.17 at 95% confidence level" when quoting the above figures.
[8] Such changes have gone beyond the sampling errors at the 95% confidence level, meaning that they are statistically significant prima facie. However, whether numerical differences are statistically significant or not is not the same as whether they are practically useful or meaningful.
[9] Starting from February 2011, these questions only use sub-samples of the tracking surveys concerned. The sub-sample sizes of this survey range from 592 to 698, and the increased sampling errors have already been reflected in the figures tabulated.

Herewith the latest figures of the 7 non-core social indicators:

[10] All error figures in the table are calculated at 95% confidence level. “95% confidence level” means that if we were to repeat a certain survey 100 times, using the same questions each time but with different random samples, we would expect 95 times getting a figure within the error margins specified. Media can state "sampling error of various ratings not more than +/-0.17 at 95% confidence level" when quoting the above figures.
[11] Such changes have gone beyond the sampling errors at the 95% confidence level, meaning that they are statistically significant prima facie. However, whether numerical differences are statistically significant or not is not the same as whether they are practically useful or meaningful.
[12] Starting from August 2010, these questions only use sub-samples of the tracking surveys concerned. The sub-sample sizes of this survey range from 597 to 587, and the increased sampling errors have already been reflected in the figures tabulated.

Herewith the latest figures of the 10 freedom sub-indicators:

[13] All error figures in the table are calculated at 95% confidence level. “95% confidence level” means that if we were to repeat a certain survey 100 times, using the same questions each time but with different random samples, we would expect 95 times getting a figure within the error margins specified. Media can state "sampling error of various ratings not more than +/-0.20 at 95% confidence level" when quoting the above figures.
[14] Such changes have gone beyond the sampling errors at the 95% confidence level, meaning that they are statistically significant prima facie. However, whether numerical differences are statistically significant or not is not the same as whether they are practically useful or meaningful.
[15] Starting from August 2010, all questions of sub-indicators only use sub-samples of the tracking surveys concerned. The sub-sample sizes of this survey range from 578 to 663, and the increased sampling errors have already been reflected in the figures tabulated.
[16] In three decimal places, the rating of Freedom to engage in artistic and literary creation is 7.462 and that of Freedom of association is 7.459.
[17] In three decimal places, the rating of Freedom of publication is 7.312 and that of Freedom of procession and demonstration is 7.306. 

Herewith the latest figures of the 2 rule of law sub-indicators and the rating of the Chief Justice:

[18] All error figures in the table are calculated at 95% confidence level. “95% confidence level” means that if we were to repeat a certain survey 100 times, using the same questions each time but with different random samples, we would expect 95 times getting a figure within the error margins specified. Media can state "sampling error of various ratings not more than +/-0.16 at 95% confidence level" when quoting the above figures, and that "sampling error is not more than +/-2.0 at 95% confidence level" when citing Geoffrey Ma's rating.
[19] Such changes have gone beyond the sampling errors at the 95% confidence level, meaning that they are statistically significant prima facie. However, whether numerical differences are statistically significant or not is not the same as whether they are practically useful or meaningful.
[20] Starting from August 2010, all questions of sub-indicators only use sub-samples of the tracking surveys concerned. The sub-sample sizes of this survey range from 588 to 647, and the increased sampling errors have already been reflected in the figures tabulated.

Regarding the core social indicators, latest results showed that, on a scale of 0-10, Hong Kong's degree of “freedom” scored the highest rating with 7.33 marks, followed by “compliance with the rule of law” with 6.99 marks, and then “prosperity”, “stability” and “democracy”, with 6.91, 6.74 and 6.33 marks respectively.

As for the non-core social indicators, “public order” has the highest score of 7.41 marks, followed by “civilization”, “efficiency”, “corruption-free practices”, “social welfare sufficiency”, “equality” and “fairness”, with scores of 7.15, 6.87, 6.68, 6.26, 6.05 and 5.58 marks correspondingly.

As for the freedom sub-indicators, the freedom of “religious belief” scored the highest rating with 8.78 marks. Freedom of “entering or leaving Hong Kong” came second with 8.49 marks. Freedoms of “academic research”, “artistic and literary creation”, “speech”, “procession and demonstration”, “publication” and “association” formed the next tier, with respective scores of 7.65, 7.47, 7.33, 7.24, 7.19 and 7.17 marks. Finally, the freedoms to “press” and “strike” attained 6.88 and 6.54 marks.

Finally, for the two rule of law sub-indicators, the impartiality of the courts scored 7.24 marks, while the rating of the fairness of the judicial system was 6.94 marks. Meanwhile, the latest popularity rating of Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma Tao-li, a representative figure of the judicial system, was 65.2 marks, on a scale of 0-100.

In January 2007, POP opened a feature page called "Opinion Daily" at the "POP Site", to record significant events and selected polling figures on a day-to-day basis, in order to provide readers with accurate information so that they can judge by themselves the reasons for the ups and downs of different opinion figures. In July 2007, POP collaborated with Wisers Information Limited whereby Wisers supplies to POP since July 24 each day a record of significant events of that day, according to the research method designed by POP. These daily entries would be uploaded to the “Opinion Daily” feature page as soon as they are verified by POP.

For the polling items covered in this press release, the previous survey was conducted from August 7 to 15, 2012 while the latest one was conducted from February 4 to 14, 2013. In between these two surveys, herewith the significant events selected from counting newspaper headlines and commentaries on a daily basis and covered by at least 25% of the local newspaper articles. Readers can make their own judgment if these significant events have any impacts to different polling figures.

Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, “Our latest survey shows that compared to 6 months ago, the ratings of all 5 core social indicators (namely, freedom, the rule of law, prosperity, stability and democracy) have gone down. Those with decrements beyond sampling errors include the ratings of ‘stability’, ‘rule of law’ and ‘prosperity’, while ‘freedom’ and ‘stability’ have dropped to record low since October 2004, probably reflecting people’s dissatisfaction with the current social environment. As for the 7 non-core social indicators, 5 have gone down, among them, ‘degree of public order’, ‘degree of equality’ and ‘degree of fairness’ register significant decreases. As for the 10 freedom sub-indicators, 8 have gone down, with the freedom of ‘association’ having dropped significantly over the 6 months, which warrants attention. In terms of absolute ratings, among the 10 freedom sub-indicators, only ‘freedom of press’ and ‘freedom to strike’ fail to reach 7 marks, meaning that people still consider Hong Kong to be quite free. In the area of rule of law, it is soothing to see the popularity of its representative figure Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma has gone up to reach a two-year high. Freedom and the rule of law are the core values and the cutting edges of Hong Kong society, they need to be constantly monitored and reflected on. As for the reasons affecting the ups and downs of various indicators, we leave it for our readers to make their own judgement after reading detailed records shown in our ‘Opinion Daily’ feature page.”

• February 26, 2013 (Tuesday) 1pm to 2pm: Popularity of CE and HKSAR Government