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

Press Release on January 12, 2015

Special Announcements

1. 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 14, 2015). Results will be announced the following day (January 15), 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. To facilitate academic study and rational discussion, POP has already released for public examination some time ago via the “HKU POP Site” (http://hkupop.pori.hk) the raw data of all 62 regular rating surveys of CE CY Leung, as well as the 181 regular rating surveys of former CE Donald Tsang and 239 regular rating surveys of former CE CH Tung, along with related demographics of respondents. Please follow normal academic standards when using or citing such data.

Abstract

POP conducted a double stage survey on people’s expectation of CE CY Leung’s Policy Address between late December 2014 and early January 2015, 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, 90% said CE should tackle housing problems, with a mean score of 4.6, in between “very important” and “quite important”. Both figures are the highest across all items. Second and third in rating go to economic and political developments, at 4.4 and 4.3, followed by medical policy and social welfare. All five items are the same as those one year ago, although their degree and order have slightly changed. 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 68% and 66% 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 1,017 successful interviews, not 1,017 x 67.8% response rate, while the sample size of the second stage survey is another 1,545, not 1,545 x 65.7% response rate. In the past, many media made this mistake.
[3] The maximum sampling error of all percentages is between +/-3 and +/-4 percentage points at 95% confidence level, while the sampling error of rating figures needs another calculation. “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 all percentages not more than +/-4% at 95% confidence level”. Because POP introduced “rim weighting” in mid-January 2014, during the transition period, whether changes in various figures are beyond sampling errors are based on tests using the same weighting methods. That is, to test whether the first set of figures collected in this survey is significantly different from that of the previous survey, both sets of data are rim weighted before testing, instead of using simple computation of the published figures.
[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 third Policy Address of CE CY Leung. 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 for both the first and second stage surveys 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 2014 mid-year and the educational attainment (highest level attended) distribution collected in the 2011 Census. Herewith the contact information for the latest survey:

Date of survey	Overall sample size	Response rate	Sampling error of percentages^[6]
19-30/12/14 (First Stage)	1,017	67.8%	+/-3%
2-9/1/15 (Second Stage)	1,545	65.7%	+/-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 mid to late December 2014, when asked to name unaided one issue that CE CY Leung should focus on in his third Policy Address to be announced this Wednesday, 37% of the respondents wished he would take “housing” as his first priority, while 24% and 12% respectively chose “political development” and “economic development”. And 8%, 4% and 3% opted for “social welfare”, “medical policy” and “education” respectively. Besides, “labour and employment” and “human rights and freedom” took up 2% 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	7-9/1/13	6-9/1/14	2-9/1/15	Latest Change
Sample base	653-675	607-682	519-645	--
Overall response rate	67.7%	69.2%	65.7%	--
Findings (with sampling error)^[7]	Finding	Finding	Finding	--
Perceived housing issues as “very important”	77%^[9]	71%^[9]	74+/-4%	+3%
Perceived housing issues as “quite important”	14%^[9]	18%^[9]	16+/-3%	-2%
“Very” + “quite” important ^[8]	91%	89%	90+/-2%	+1%
Mean value^[10]	4.7 (Base=659)	4.6 (Base=663)	4.6+/-0.1 (Base=598)	--
Perceived economic development issues as “very important”	55%^[9]	56%	55+/-4%	-1%
Perceived economic development issues as “quite important”	31%^[9]	29%	26+/-4%	-3%
“Very” + “quite” important ^[8]	86%	85%	81+/-3%	-4%
Mean value^[10]	4.4 (Base=649)	4.4 (Base=659)	4.4+/-0.1 (Base=478)	--
Perceived political development issues as “very important”	33%	46%^[9]	54+/-4%	+8%^[9]
Perceived political development issues as “quite important”	31%	28%	18+/-3%	-10%^[9]
“Very” + “quite” important ^[8]	64%	74%^[9]	72+/-4%	-2%
Mean value^[10]	4.0 (Base=613)	4.3 ^[9] (Base=554)	4.3+/-0.1^[11] (Base=457)	--
Perceived medical policy issues as “very important”	59%	58%	49+/-4%	-9%^[9]
Perceived medical policy issues as “quite important”	29%	33%	31+/-4%	-2%
“Very” + “quite” important ^[8]	88%	91%^[9]	80+/-3%	-11%^[9]
Mean value^[10]	4.5 (Base=665)	4.5 (Base=601)	4.3+/-0.1^[11] (Base=585)	-0.2^[9]
Perceived social welfare issues as “very important”	61%	52%^[9]	43+/-4%	-9%^[9]
Perceived social welfare issues as “quite important”	26%	25%	29+/-4%	+4%
“Very” + “quite” important ^[8]	87%^[9]	77%^[9]	30+/-4%	+5%^[9]
Mean value^[10]	4.5 (Base=639)	4.2 ^[9] (Base=654)	4.1+/-0.1 (Base=630)	-0.1^[9]

[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 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.
[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.
[11] In one decimal place, the respective mean value of “political development issues” and “medical policy issues” are 4.34 and 4.26. Thus, they are ranked 3rd and 4th.

When asked to evaluate the importance of each item individually, 90% said CE CY Leung needed to tackle housing issue in the coming Policy Address. Economic development, political development, medical policy and social welfare have 81%, 72%, 80% and 73%. The mean scores of the five issues are 4.6, 4.4, 4.3, 4.3 and 4.1 correspondingly, meaning in between “very important” and “quite important” for all five items.

Commentary

Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, “Nine 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, 90% said CE should tackle housing problems, with a mean score of 4.6, in between ‘very important’ and ‘quite important’. Both figures are the highest across all items. Second and third in rating go to economic and political developments, at 4.4 and 4.3, followed by medical policy and social welfare. All five items are the same as those one year ago, although their degree and order have slightly changed.”

Future Releases (Tentative)

January 13, 2015 (Tuesday) 1pm to 2pm: Popularity of CE and Principal Officials
January 15, 2015 (Thursday) 1pm to 2pm: Policy Address Instant Poll