HKU POP: Public Sentiment Index drops to new low since 2003Back

“OCLP Deliberation Series” DDay1 to be held on June 9

The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong is commissioned by the Secretariat of the “Occupy Central with Love and Peace” (OCLP) to organize the “OCLP Deliberation Series”, which aims to let members of the general public and supporters of the campaign formulate proposals for the 2017 CE Election through rational discussions. There will be three Deliberation Days (DDays) in the Deliberation Series, and DDay1 is scheduled to be held on June 9 (Sunday), comprising one module for the general public and another module for campaign supporters. For the general public, POP will invite 100 Hong Kong citizens to participate in the event via random telephone calls, while for the campaign supporters, they will be invited by the OCLP Secretariat. Details of these activities have been announced in the press conference held last week.

The Public Sentiment Index (PSI) compiled by Public Opinion Programme (POP) aims at quantifying Hong Kong people’s sentiments, in order to explain and predict the likelihood of collective behaviour. PSI comprises 2 components: one being Government Appraisal (GA) Score and the other being Society Appraisal (SA) Score. GA refers to peoples’ appraisal of society’s governance while SA refers to peoples’ appraisal of the social environment. Both GA and SA scores are compiled from a variety of opinion survey figures. All PSI, GA and SA scores range between 0 to 200, with 100 meaning normal, the grading reference of the scores are shown below. For methodological detailed please refer to the HKU POP Site at http://hkupop.pori.hk.

POP started to pilot study the “Public Sentiment Index” in year 2010 in collaboration with NowTV. The first survey was conducted in June 2010, followed by a series of monthly tracking surveys in 2011. There were altogether 13 surveys, covered by 11 releases from March 2011 to January 2012. All results have been uploaded to the POP Site.

 

At the end of June 2012, before the 15th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong, POP officially released a “PSI analysis” with figures dating back to 1992, spanning over 20 years. Moreover, the frequency of the study was set at twice a month. In October 2012, echoing the start of a new Legislative Council, POP decided to set the cut-off date of all PSI analyses at the Sunday proceeding every 15th and last day of month, whereas the release date was set at the first Thursday following the cut-off date, except under special circumstances.

 

Cut-off date of the PSI figures released by POP today is May 26, 2013, while that of the next round of release will be June 9, 2013. The tentative release date for the next release will be June 13, 2013 (Thursday).

The PSI released by POP today shows that as of May 26, 2013, the latest Public Sentiment Index (PSI) is 73.9, up 2.0 from early-May. As for the Government Appraisal (GA) and Society Appraisal (SA), the scores are 84.2 and 78.6, down 0.4 and up 3.3 respectively. The monthly average charts of PSI, GA and SA are shown below:

Latest figure	Public Sentiment Index (PSI): 73.9 (+2.0)	Government Appraisal (GA): 84.2 (-0.4)	Society Appraisal (SA): 78.6 (+3.3)
Monthly average	Public Sentiment Index (PSI): 72.9 (-5.2)	Government Appraisal (GA): 84.4 (-6.1)	Society Appraisal (SA): 76.9 (-1.6)

As for the meaning of the score values, please refer to the following:

Recent PSI, GA and SA figures are tabulated as follows:

Release date	14/3/13	28/3/13	18/4/13	3/5/13	16/5/13	31/5/13	Latest change
Cut-off date	10/3/13	24/3/13	14/4/13	28/4/13	12/5/13	26/5/13	--
Public Sentiment Index (PSI)	80.8	84.7	77.5	78.8	71.9	73.9	+2.0
Government Appraisal (GA)	90.6	96.2	89.6	91.5	84.6	84.2	-0.4
Society Appraisal (SA)	82.5	82.5[1]	78.5	78.5[1]	75.2	78.6	+3.3

[1] Starting from 2013, POP will adopt the latest published “SA score” directly for those periods with no new data collected for the “SA” related topics.

Recent average PSI, GA and SA figures per month are tabulated as follows:

 

Per month figure	3/13	4/13	5/13	Latest change
Public Sentiment Index (PSI)	82.7	78.1	72.9	-5.2
Government Appraisal (GA)	93.4	90.5	84.4	-6.1
Society Appraisal (SA)	82.5	78.5	76.9	-1.6

Winnie Wing-Yi Lee, Research Manager of Public Opinion Programme, observed, “In terms of monthly readings, Hong Kong’s Public Sentiment Index for the month of May has dropped to a new low since July 2003, at 72.9 now which is less than 10 points above the 63.8 registered back then. However, in terms of single PSI which is now compiled half-monthly, the reading for late May has slightly rebounded as compared to early May. Whether it will oscillate downward, or is a true rebound remains to be seen. As for the reasons affecting the ups and downs of these figures, we leave it to our readers to form their own judgment using detailed records displayed in the ‘Opinion Daily’ of our POP Site.”

• June 13, 2013 (Thursday) 1pm to 2pm

Please refer to the HKU POP Site at http://hkupop.pori.hk.

• Online resource: “PSI” methodological notes (Chinese Only)

• Online chart: PSI (per month) (1992-2013)

• Online table: PSI (per month) (1992-2013)

• Online table: PSI (per release) (7/2012 – 5/2013)