HKU POP: PSI drops slightlyBack

The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at The University of Hong Kong will conduct a headcount for “Walk for Peace and Democracy” participants on August 17 (Sunday), and release its preliminary results via the “HKU POP SITE” (http://hkupop.pori.hk) around 2 hours after the rally. To read the figures, one can go to the POP Site, click on the top menu “Special Features”, then “Research on Mass Gatherings and Rallies”, and then make the choice. Same as POP’s “July 1 Headcount Projects”, to facilitate the public to do their own headcount of the rally, POP will upload the full version of the headcount video to the “PopCon” e-platform (http://popcon.hk) within 10 days after the rally.

Since 2003, POP has been running headcounts for many rallies, purely out of intellectual curiosity. Albeit minor adjustments across the years, the method used is to split the road into lanes, then count the number of people passing through them during specific time segments, and then project the total number by the total time spanned as well as an adjustment factor to cover those not passing through the checkpoint. This method and all adjustment factors have been well documented. We welcome members of the public, especially reporters and teachers, to run their own count using this method.

Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, “POP’s headcount results may differ significantly from participants’ general impression, because such impressions have been affected by unclear figures for a long time, and it is difficult to grab the idea of tens of thousands of people. For this reason, POP hopes that members of the public can make their own counts using simple scientific methods, in order to learn from each other in the spirit of scientific enquiry, and not to entangle ourselves with controversies over turnout numbers. The fact that ‘The Alliance for Peace and Democracy’ has invited academic institutes to conduct headcounts this time is a very good start.”

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 people’s appraisal of society’s governance while SA refers to people’s 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 August 10, 2014, while that of the next round of release will be August 24, 2014. The tentative release date for the next release will be August 28, 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 2013 year-end and the educational attainment (highest level attended) distribution collected in the 2011 Census. The PSI released by POP today shows that as of August 10, 2014, the latest Public Sentiment Index (PSI) is 72.2, down 1.3 from late-July. As for the Government Appraisal (GA) and Society Appraisal (SA), the scores are 79.5 and 80.8, down 4.7 and up 2.7 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 72.2 can be considered as among the worst 3% across the past 20 years or so, while the GA and SA scores of 79.5 and 80.8 can be considered as among the worst 9% 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:

Kelvin Chung-Ho Yu, Senior Statistical Analyst of Public Opinion Programme, observed, “Hong Kong’s Public Sentiment Index (PSI) slightly drops by 1.3 points since late July to 72.2 in early August. People’s appraisal of the social environment (SA) continues to rise by 2.7 points, but people’s appraisal of society’s governance (GA) drops by 4.7 points. This explains the overall slight drop in PSI. 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 28, 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)