HKU POP releases findings on people’s expectation of CE CY Leung’s Policy Address Back

Press Release on January 13, 2014

Special Announcements

(1) POP will conduct instant survey on CE’s policy address

As in previous years, Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong will conduct an instant survey after the Chief Executive delivers his policy address on Wednesday (January 15, 2014). Results will be announced the following day (January 16), after which POP will conduct follow-up surveys which would be released in due course. If individual media would like to obtain the results of our instant survey through sponsorship on the day that the Policy Address is announced, please contact us today or tomorrow, so that we can make special arrangements.

(2) “New Year Rally” video record for public consumption

POP has uploaded the full set of video record of the New Year Rally to the “PopCon” e-platform (http://popcon.hk) today. Public are welcomed to download the video record from the “New Year Rally Feature page”, and do their own headcount of the Rally. POP also provides all the video clips in higher resolution, available for purchase at production cost, for details, please refer to the note inside the page.

Abstract

POP conducted a double stage survey on people’s expectation of CE CY Leung’s Policy Address between late December 2013 and early January 2014, by means of random telephone surveys conducted by real interviewers. We use a two-stage design to study both the absolute and relative importance of different policy items. In our latest surveys, when asked to name unaided only one issue, most people considered “housing” the most pressing policy area to be handled in CE CY Leung’s Policy Address. In terms of absolute percentage of importance, ‘housing’ also gets the highest mean score of 4.6, in between “very important” and “quite important”. The second place is “medical policy”, followed by “economic development”, then “political development” and “social welfare”. Compared to this time last year, all five items remain on the list, among them, the absolute importance of “political development” has increased significantly, while that of “social welfare” has decreased significantly, and the other three have not changed much. The maximum sampling error of the survey is +/-4 percentage points at 95% confidence level, response rate of the first stage and second stage survey being 66% and 69% respectively.

Points to note:
[1] The address of the "HKU POP SITE" is http://hkupop.pori.hk, journalists can check out the details of the survey there.

[2] The sample size of the first stage survey is 1,011 successful interviews, not 1,011 x 66.4% response rate, while the sample size of the second stage survey is another 1,009, not 1,009 x 69.2% response rate. In the past, many media made this mistake.
[3] The maximum sampling error of all percentages is +/-4 percentage points 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. When quoting these figures, journalists can state “sampling error of percentages not more than +/-4% at 95% confidence level”.
[4] Because of sampling errors in conducting the survey(s) and the rounding procedures in processing the data, the figures cannot be too precise, and the totals may not be completely accurate. Therefore, when quoting percentages of the survey(s), journalists should refrain from reporting decimal places, but when quoting the rating figures, one decimal place can be used.
[5] The data of this survey is collected by means of random telephone interviews conducted by real interviewers, not by any interactive voice system (IVS). If a research organization uses “computerized random telephone survey” to camouflage its IVS operation, it should be considered unprofessional.

Latest Figures

POP today releases on schedule via the POP SITE the latest findings on people’s expectation of the second Policy Address of CE CY Leung. As a general practice, all 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 mid-2013 for both the first and second stage surveys. Herewith the contact information for the latest surveys:

Date of survey	Overall sample size	Response rate	Sampling error of percentages^[6]
30/12/13-5/1/14 (First Stage)	1,011	66.4%	+/-3%
6-9/1/14 (Second Stage)	1,009	69.2%	+/-3%

[6] 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. Questions using only sub-samples would have bigger sample error.

According to our first stage survey conducted in late December 2013 and early January 2014, when asked to name unaided one issue that CE CY Leung should focus on in his second Policy Address to be announced this Wednesday, 38% of the respondents wished he would take “housing” as his first priority, while 14%, 12% and 11% respectively chose “economic development”, “social welfare” and “political development”. And 6%, 5% and 2% opted for “medical policy”, “education” and “labour and employment” respectively. Besides, “human rights and freedom”, “civic education” and “environment” took up 1% each, while 8% of the respondents failed to give a specific answer. Please refer to the “HKU POP SITE” for detailed figures.

In order to further study people’s expectation, another survey was then conducted whereby respondents were asked to evaluate each of the 5 top priority items individually, on a 5-point scale, how important it is for each item to be tackled in the Policy Address. Results compared to those of last 2 years are summarized below in descending order of mean values:

Date of survey	28/9-5/10/11	7-9/1/13	6-9/1/14	Latest Change
Sample base	501-557	653-675	607-682	--
Overall response rate	66.0%	67.7%	69.2%
Findings (with sampling error)^[7]	Finding	Finding	Finding	--
Perceived housing issues as “very important”	69%	77%^[9]	71+/-3%	-6%^[9]
Perceived housing issues as “quite important”	20%	14%^[9]	18+/-3%	+4%^[9]
“Very” + “quite” important ^[8]	89%	91%	89+/-2%	-2%
Mean value^[10]	4.6+/-0.1 (Base=491)	4.7+/-0.1 (Base=659)	4.6+/-0.1 (Base=663)	-0.1
Perceived medical policy issues as “very important”	60%	59%	58+/-4%	-1%
Perceived medical policy issues as “quite important”	28%	29%	33+/-4%	+4%
“Very” + “quite” important ^[8]	88%	88%	91+/-2%	+3%^[9]
Mean value^[10]	4.5+/-0.1 (Base=528)	4.5+/-0.1 (Base=665)	4.5+/-0.1 (Base=601)	--
Perceived economic development issues as “very important”	63%	55%^[9]	56+/-4%	+1%
Perceived economic development issues as “quite important”	23%	31%^[9]	29+/-3%	-2%
“Very” + “quite” important ^[8]	86%	86%	85+/-3%	-1%
Mean value^[10]	4.5+/-0.1 (Base=535)	4.4+/-0.1 (Base=649)	4.4+/-0.1 (Base=659)	--
Perceived political development issues as “very important”	--	33%	46+/-4%	+13%^[9]
Perceived political development issues as “quite important”	--	31%	28+/-4%	-3%
“Very” + “quite” important ^[8]	--	64%	74+/-4%	+10%^[9]
Mean value^[10]	--	4.0+/-0.1 (Base=613)	4.3+/-0.1 (Base=554)	+0.3^[9]
Perceived social welfare issues as “very important”	58%	61%	52+/-4%	-9%^[9]
Perceived social welfare issues as “quite important”	25%	26%	25+/-3%	-1%
“Very” + “quite” important ^[8]	83%	87%^[9]	77+/-3%	-10%^[9]
Mean value^[10]	4.4+/-0.1 (Base=500)	4.5+/-0.1 (Base=639)	4.2+/-0.1 (Base=654)	-0.3^[9]
Perceived labour and employment issues as “very important”	54%	--	--	--
Perceived labour and employment issues as “quite important”	30%	--	--	--
“Very” + “quite” important ^[8]	84%	--	--	--
Mean value^[10]	4.4+/-0.1 (Base=510)	--	--	--

[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 percentages not more than +/-4% at 95% confidence level” when quoting the above figures.
[8] Percentages in this column may not be equal to the sum of percentages shown in the columns of “very” and “quite important” due to the round-off problem.
[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.
[10] The mean value is calculated by quantifying all individual responses into 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 marks according to their degree of importance level, where 1 is the lowest and 5 the highest, and then calculate the sample mean.

When asked to evaluate the importance of each item individually, 89% said CE CY Leung needed to tackle housing issue in the coming Policy Address. Medical policy, economic development, political development and social welfare have 91%, 85%, 74% and 77%. The mean scores of the five issues are 4.6, 4.5, 4.4, 4.3 and 4.2 correspondingly, meaning in between “very important” and “quite important” for all five items.

Commentary

Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, “Eight years ago we began to use a two-stage design to study people’s expectation of the upcoming Policy Address, in order to study both the absolute and relative importance of different policy items. In our latest surveys, when asked to name unaided only one issue, most people considered ‘housing’ the most pressing policy area to be handled in CE CY Leung’s Policy Address. In terms of absolute percentage of importance, ‘housing’ also gets the highest mean score of 4.6, in between ‘very important’ and ‘quite important’. The second place is ‘medical policy’, followed by ‘economic development’, then ‘political development’ and ‘social welfare’. Compared to this time last year, all five items remain on the list, among them, the absolute importance of ‘political development’ has increased significantly, while that of ‘social welfare’ has decreased significantly, and the other three have not changed much.”

Future Releases (Tentative)

January 14, 2014 (Tuesday) 1pm to 2pm: Popularity of CE and Principal Officials
January 16, 2014 (Thursday) 1pm to 2pm: Policy Address Instant Poll