HKU POP: PSI continues to dropBack

The Public Sentiment Index (PSI) compiled by the Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong 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 respective of 4 and 6 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 February 23, 2014, while that of the next round of release will be March 9, 2014. The tentative release date for the next release will be March 13, 2014 (Thursday).

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. The PSI released by POP today shows that as of February 23, 2014, the latest Public Sentiment Index (PSI) is 73.6, down 4.8 from early-February. As for the Government Appraisal (GA) and Society Appraisal (SA), the scores are 81.3 and 81.1, down 4.2 and 3.0 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:

The latest PSI of 73.6 can be considered as among the worst 4% across the past 20 years, while the GA and SA scores of 81.3 and 81.1 can be considered as among the worst 11% and 10% respectively.

Recent values of PSI, GA, SA and 10 fundamental figures are tabulated as follows:

[1] POP will adopt the latest published weighting index figures when there are no respective updates.

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, “Hong Kong’s Public Sentiment Index drops 4.8 points to the current value of 73.6 after a surge in January, which can be considered as among the worst 4% across the past 20 years. The Government Appraisal (GA) and Society Appraisal (SA) scores have both dropped to almost 80 points, and can be considered as among the worst 11% and 10% respectively across the past 20 years. As for monthly averages, the latest monthly PSI stands at 76.0, down 1.9 from last month, GA stands at 83.4, down 1.6, while SA stands at 82.6, down 1.2. Recent discussions arising from press freedom and anti-mainland-tourist demonstrations are believed to be the main reason for the changes in PSI. As for other 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.”

• March 13, 2014 (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: PSI scores and their percentiles

• Online chart: PSI (per month) (1992-2014)

• Online chart: PSI (half-yearly average) (1992-2014)

• Online table: PSI (per release) (2012 – 2014)

• Online table: PSI (per month) (1992-2014)

• Online table: PSI (half-yearly average) (1992-2014)