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

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).

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 August 11, 2013, while that of the next round of release will be August 25, 2013. The tentative release date for the next release will be August 29, 2013 (Thursday).

The PSI released by POP today shows that as of August 11, 2013, the latest Public Sentiment Index (PSI) is 69.0, down 0.3 from late-July. As for the Government Appraisal (GA), the score is 80.8, down 0.4 from late-July, while that of the Society Appraisal (SA) remains unchanged at 74.7 because no new survey has been conducted. 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:

The latest PSI of 69.0 can be considered as among the worst 2% across the past 20 years, while the GA and SA scores of 80.8 and 74.7 can be considered as among the worst 10% and 5% respectively.

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

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

Frank Wai-Kin Lee, Research Manager of Public Opinion Programme, observed, “Hong Kong’s Public Sentiment Index continued to drop for more than a month, down to 69.0 in early August, which is another record low since July 2003, just about 5 points above the 63.8 registered back then. This can be considered as among the worst 2% across the past 20 years, while the GA and SA scores of 80.8 and 74.7 can be considered as among the worst 10% and 5% respectively. 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.”

• August 29, 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 resource:Online resource: PSI scores and their percentiles

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

• Online chart: PSI (half-yearly average) (1992-2013)

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

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

• Online table: PSI (half-yearly average) (1992-2013)