HKU POP releases the latest social indicatorsBack

The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong has already released the final activity report and all video records of “OCLP Deliberation Series” DDay1, together with all video records of July 1 Rally for head counting. Please go to these websites for free downloading: “HKU POP Site” (http://hkupop.pori.hk) and “PopCon” e-platform (http://popcon.hk).

POP interviewed 1,027 Hong Kong people between July 30 and August 1 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, prosperity, the rule of law, stability and democracy) have remained very stable. However, among the 7 non-core social indicators, “corruption-free” has dropped to a new low since 1998, probably due to the Timothy Tong Incident and many conflict of interest cases among public office bearers. As for the 10 freedom sub-indicators, except that of “freedom of religious belief”, ratings of the other 9 indicators have all gone up, and those registered increases beyond sampling errors include “freedom to strike”, “freedom to engage in artistic and literary creation”, “freedom of speech”, “freedom of publication” and “freedom to enter or leave Hong Kong”. 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, the popularity of its representative figure Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma has climbed to a record high since he became the Chief Justice, whereas the rating of “impartiality of the courts” also registered a significant increase. The sampling error of rating figure of various indicators is below +/-0.19 marks while that of Geoffrey Ma is below +/-1.7 marks. The response rate of the survey is 67%.

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 year-end. 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] Starting from February 2011, these questions only use sub-samples of the tracking surveys concerned. The sub-sample sizes of this survey range from 573 to 673, and the increased sampling errors have already been reflected in the figures tabulated.
[8] 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.
[9] 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.

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

[10] Starting from August 2010, these questions only use sub-samples of the tracking surveys concerned. The sub-sample sizes of this survey range from 575 to 660, and the increased sampling errors have already been reflected in the figures tabulated.
[11] 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.
[12] 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.

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

[13] 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 577 to 635, and the increased sampling errors have already been reflected in the figures tabulated.
[14] 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 +/-0.19 at 95% confidence level” when quoting the above figures.
[15] 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.
[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] 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 609 to 635, and the increased sampling errors have already been reflected in the figures tabulated.
[19] 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 +/-1.7 at 95% confidence level” when citing Geoffrey Ma’s rating.
[20] 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.

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 7.35 marks, followed by “prosperity” with 6.96 marks, and then “compliance with the rule of law”, “stability” and “democracy”, with 6.95, 6.65 and 6.28 marks respectively.

As for the non-core social indicators, “public order” has the highest score of 7.33 marks, followed by “civilization”, “efficiency”, “corruption-free practices”, “social welfare sufficiency”, “equality” and “fairness”, with scores of 7.03, 6.80, 6.37, 6.33, 6.07 and 5.76 marks correspondingly.

As for the freedom sub-indicators, the freedom of “religious belief” scored the highest rating with 8.71 marks. Freedom of “entering or leaving Hong Kong” came second with 8.62 marks. Freedoms of “artistic and literary creation”, “academic research”, “speech”, “publication”, “procession and demonstration” and “association” formed the next tier, with respective scores of 7.74, 7.71, 7.51, 7.36, 7.34 and 7.21 marks. Finally, the freedoms to “press” and “strike” attained 6.96 and 6.89 marks.

Finally, for the two rule of law sub-indicators, the impartiality of the courts scored 7.40 marks, while the rating of the fairness of the judicial system was 6.84 marks. Meanwhile, the latest popularity rating of Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma Tao-li, a representative figure of the judicial system, was 68.5 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 February 4 to 14, 2013 while the latest one was conducted from July 30 to August 1, 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, prosperity, the rule of law, stability and democracy) have remained very stable. However, among the 7 non-core social indicators, ‘corruption-free’ has dropped to a new low since 1998, probably due to the Timothy Tong Incident and many conflict of interest cases among public office bearers. As for the 10 freedom sub-indicators, except that of ‘freedom of religious belief’, ratings of the other 9 indicators have all gone up, and those registered increases beyond sampling errors include ‘freedom to strike’, ‘freedom to engage in artistic and literary creation’, ‘freedom of speech’, ‘freedom of publication’ and ‘freedom to enter or leave Hong Kong’. 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, the popularity of its representative figure Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma has climbed to a record high since he became the Chief Justice, whereas the rating of ‘impartiality of the courts’ also registered a significant increase. 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.”

• August 13, 2013 (Tuesday) 1pm to 2pm: Popularity of CE and Principal Officials