HKU POP releases the latest social indicatorsBack

The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong interviewed 1,031 Hong Kong people between February 7 and 12 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 stable. However, that of ‘freedom’ has dropped to a new low since October 2004. As for the 7 non-core social indicators, 5 have gone up, among them, degrees of ‘public order’, ‘corruption-free’ and ‘civilization’ register significant increases. However, all 10 freedom sub-indicators have dropped, 8 of which have dropped beyond sampling errors. In terms of absolute ratings, among the 10 freedom sub-indicators, only ‘freedom of association’, ‘freedom of press’ and ‘freedom to strike’ fail to reach 7 marks, while those of ‘freedom to engage art and literary creation’ and ‘freedom of press’ have reached all-time record low since this survey series began in 1997. All in all, people still consider Hong Kong’s degree of freedom to be positive, but their appraisal of all types of freedom is getting worse, probably as a result of recent incidents affecting the news media. In the area of rule of law, all ratings have dropped including the popularity of its representative figure Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma, down to a record low since he became the Chief Justice, whereas the rating of ‘impartiality of the courts’ also registered a significant decrease. The sampling error of rating figure of various indicators is no greater than +/-0.20 marks while that of Geoffrey Ma is no greater than +/-2.1 marks. The response rate of the survey is 68%.

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. From 2014, POP enhanced the previous simple weighting method based on age and gender distribution to “rim weighting” based on age, gender and education (highest level attended) distribution. The latest figures released today have been rim-weighted according to provisional figures obtained from the Census and Statistics Department regarding the gender-age distribution of the Hong Kong population in mid-year 2013 and the educational attainment (highest level attended) distribution collected in the 2011 Census.  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.
[7] The figures shown in the "latest change" column of this press release have been tested after "rim weighting" data collected in this and last surveys. The structural effect of using the new weighting method is small, around -0.70 to +0.05 for rating figures, while statistical significance tests are not affected.

Herewith the latest figures of the 5 core social indicators:

[8] Starting from February 2011, these questions only use sub-samples of the tracking surveys concerned. The sub-sample sizes of this survey range from 547 to 578, and the increased sampling errors have already been reflected in the figures tabulated.
[9] 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 +/-0.20 at 95% confidence level” when quoting the above figures.
[10] Such changes have gone beyond the sampling errors at the 95% confidence level under the same weighting method, 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:

[11] Starting from August 2010, these questions only use sub-samples of the tracking surveys concerned. The sub-sample sizes of this survey range from 563 to 584, and the increased sampling errors have already been reflected in the figures tabulated.
[12] 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 +/-0.18 at 95% confidence level” when quoting the above figures.
[13] Such changes have gone beyond the sampling errors at the 95% confidence level under the same weighting method, 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:

[14] 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 541 to 584, and the increased sampling errors have already been reflected in the figures tabulated.
[15] 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 +/-0.20 at 95% confidence level” when quoting the above figures.
[16] Such changes have gone beyond the sampling errors at the 95% confidence level under the same weighting method, 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.
[17] 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.
[18] 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:

[19] 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 565 to 589, and the increased sampling errors have already been reflected in the figures tabulated.
[20] 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 +/-2.1 at 95% confidence level” when citing Geoffrey Ma’s rating.
[21] Such changes have gone beyond the sampling errors at the 95% confidence level under the same weighting method, 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 7.30 marks, followed by “prosperity” with 7.02 marks, and then “compliance with the rule of law”, “stability” and “democracy”, with 6.91, 6.80 and 6.25 marks respectively.

As for the non-core social indicators, “public order” has the highest score of 7.59 marks, followed by “civilization”, “efficiency”, “corruption-free practices”, “social welfare sufficiency”, “equality” and “fairness”, with scores of 7.25, 6.87, 6.61, 6.39, 6.00 and 5.72 marks correspondingly.

As for the freedom sub-indicators, the freedom of “religious belief” scored the highest rating with 8.58 marks. Freedom of “entering or leaving Hong Kong” came second with 8.48 marks. Freedoms of “academic research”, “artistic and literary creation”, “speech”, “procession and demonstration”, “publication” and “association” formed the next tier, with respective scores of 7.48, 7.26, 7.07, 7.05, 7.04 and 6.91 marks. Finally, the freedoms to “press” and “strike” attained 6.61 and 6.51 marks.

Finally, for the two rule of law sub-indicators, the impartiality of the courts scored 7.06 marks, while the rating of the fairness of the judicial system was 6.73 marks. Meanwhile, the latest popularity rating of Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma Tao-li, a representative figure of the judicial system, was 60.6 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 July 30 to August 1, 2013, while the latest one was conducted from February 7 to 12, 2014. 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 stable. However, that of ‘freedom’ has dropped to a new low since October 2004. As for the 7 non-core social indicators, 5 have gone up, among them, degrees of ‘public order’, ‘corruption-free’ and ‘civilization’ register significant increases. However, all 10 freedom sub-indicators have dropped, 8 of which have dropped beyond sampling errors. In terms of absolute ratings, among the 10 freedom sub-indicators, only ‘freedom of association’, ‘freedom of press’ and ‘freedom to strike’ fail to reach 7 marks, while those of ‘freedom to engage art and literary creation’ and ‘freedom of press’ have reached all-time record low since this survey series began in 1997. All in all, people still consider Hong Kong’s degree of freedom to be positive, but their appraisal of all types of freedom is getting worse, probably as a result of recent incidents affecting the news media. In the area of rule of law, all ratings have dropped including the popularity of its representative figure Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma, down to a record low since he became the Chief Justice, whereas the rating of ‘impartiality of the courts’ also registered a significant decrease. 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.”

• February 25, 2014 (Tuesday) 1pm to 2pm: Popularity of CE and HKSAR Government