HKU POP: Public Sentiment Index recovers slightlyBack

(1) Preliminary Report and video clips of “OCLP Deliberation Series” DDay1 now released

The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong earlier released the Preliminary Report of the “OCLP Deliberation Series” DDay1. Members of public and media are welcome to read the Chinese report at the “OCLP Deliberation Series” Feature Page of the “HKU POP Site” (http://hkupop.pori.hk) and also at the “PopCon” e-platform (http://popcon.hk). The video clips of the plenary sessions and small group discussions of the public module are all available at the feature page, while some video clips of the supporters module are still being processed.
 
(2) Review of HKSAR anniversary

POP’s usual practice is to issue more frequent releases before and after the middle and also end point of each year, under the names of “HKSAR anniversary” and “Year-end” survey series for public consumption. Recently, POP issues a number of releases under the “HKSAR anniversary” survey series. Please see POP Site and also the “Future Releases” section of this press release for more information. Since the figures released today by POP come from the last tracking survey on this topic conducted before July 2013, the half-yearly averages published in the website are good for HKSAR anniversary stories. Because the handover of Hong Kong occurred on July 1, it may be more appropriate and accurate to analyze macro changes of Hong Kong society using half-yearly rather than yearly figures. Moreover, a chronology of major events as reported by the local newspapers over many years past can be found in the “Opinion Daily” at the “POP Site”. This may also be useful in running HKSAR anniversary reviews.

The Public Sentiment Index (PSI) compiled by 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 June 23, 2013, while that of the next round of release will be July 14, 2013. The tentative release date for the next release will be July 18, 2013 (Thursday).

The PSI released by POP today shows that as of June 23, 2013, the latest Public Sentiment Index (PSI) is 73.8, up 2.1 from early-June. As for the Government Appraisal (GA) and Society Appraisal (SA), the scores are 81.0 and 81.7, down 2.5 and up 5.6 respectively. The monthly average charts of PSI, GA and SA are shown below:

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

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

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

Edward Chit-Fai Tai, Senior Data Analyst of Public Opinion Programme, observed, “At the end of June, the Hong Kong’s Public Sentiment Index has slightly recovered, mainly due to the significant rebound of the Society Appraisal (SA) Score which indicates peoples’ appraisal of the social environment. It should be noted that, however, the Government Appraisal (GA) Score which indicates peoples’ appraisal of society’s governance has continued to drop for four consecutive times accumulating a drop of more than 10 marks in two months. Put together, both SA and GA scores are now near 80 marks, which is the worst 10% region of our existing records. 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.”

• July 18, 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 – 6/2013)