HKU POP: PSI drops sharplyBack

The Public Sentiment Index (PSI) compiled by 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 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 February 8, 2015, while that of the next round of release will be February 22, 2015. The tentative release date for the next release will be February 27, 2015 (Friday).

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 2014 mid-year and the educational attainment (highest level attended) distribution collected in the 2011 Census. The PSI released by POP today shows that as of February 8, 2015, the latest Public Sentiment Index (PSI) is 63.9, down 8.3 from late-January. As for the Government Appraisal (GA) and Society Appraisal (SA), the scores are 75.4 and 72.5, down 3.1 and 9.2 respectively. The chart of PSI, GA and SA are shown below:

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.
[2] Latest changes are based on the differences between the exact values of the two figures, but not the rounded figures shown in the table.

As for the meaning of the score values, please refer to the following:

The latest PSI of 63.9 can be considered as among the worst 1% across the past 20 years or so, while the GA and SA scores of 75.4 and 72.5 can be considered as among the worst 5% and 3% respectively.

Frank Lee, Research Manager of Public Opinion Programme, observed, “Hong Kong’s Public Sentiment Index (PSI) plunges in early February after a rebound in late January. The latest figure is 63.9 points, which can be considered as among the worst 1% across the past 20 years or so. The drop was due to decreases in both the Government Appraisal (GA) and Society Appraisal (SA) scores, which stand at 75.4 and 72.5 points respectively and can be considered as among the worst 5% and 3% over the past 20 years or so. The effect of CE’s announcement of Policy Address last month on soothing public anger seems to have receded. Incidents of Sino-Hong Kong conflicts appeared recently, which may have affected the PSI figures somewhat. 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.”

• February 27, 2015 (Friday) 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) (1992-2015)

• Online chart: PSI (half-yearly average) (1992-2015)

• Online table: PSI (per release) (2012 – 2015)

• Online table: PSI (per month) (1992-2015)

• Online table: PSI (half-yearly average) (1992-2015)