HKU POP SITE releases the latest results of a number of subjective social and legal indicatorsBack

The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong today releases on schedule via the "HKU POP SITE" (http://hkupop.pori.hk) the latest results of four subjective social indicators, namely, on Hong Kong's degree of "democracy", "freedom", "prosperity" and "stability", a series of questions related to the rule of law, as well as people's appraisal of the performance of members of the Legislative Council in general. Findings of the different items obtained since January are summarized as follows:

* "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
** Collapsed from a 5-point scale

Between July 14 and 16, 2003, POP conducted a random telephone survey by interviewers, which successfully interviewed 1,073 Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong of age 18 or above. Results showed that, the ratings registered for the various subjective social and legal indicators have all dropped. With respect to the 4 core social indicators, on a scale of 0-10, people's ratings on Hong Kong's degree of "democracy", "freedom", "prosperity" and "stability" were 5.59, 6.84, 5.18 and 5.82 marks correspondingly. Regarding the rule of law, people's appraisal of Hong Kong's compliance with the rule of law scored 6.43 marks, that of the fairness of the judicial system scored 6.18 marks, while the latest rating of the impartiality of the courts was 6.68 marks. Meanwhile, the latest popularity rating of Chief Justice Andrew Li Kowk-nang, a representative figure of the judicial system, was 56.2 marks, on a scale of 0-100. Besides, the latest figures revealed that 50% of the respondents were dissatisfied with the performance of members of the Legislative Council in general, 11% were satisfied, 27% said "half-half", while 12% did not give a definite answer.

Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, made the following analysis: "Since the method and dates of survey for the 7 indicators are the same, all of them could be compared on equal footing. The latest findings suggested that people are currently most satisfied with Hong Kong's degree of "freedom", followed by "rule of law", "stability", "democracy" and then "prosperity". All indicators, however, have dropped, so has people's satisfaction with the overall performance of LegCo members. This indicates widespread dissatisfaction in every corner of our society."

Shall anyone have any question regarding the research design of the surveys published in the POP Site, members of the POP Team will be happy to answer them, but we will not further comment on the findings. Shall any person or journalist have any other questions, please email them to us at <[email protected]>. The Director of Public Opinion Programme would answer them as soon as possible. We will keep such an arrangement under constant review, suggestions most welcome.

POP's normal practice is to release the results of our regular surveys every Tuesday at 2 pm via our POP Site, except during public holidays, each time with a forecast of the items to be released in the forthcoming week. We will review and adjust this operation regularly. According to this schedule, the date and time of our next release will be August 5, 2003, Tuesday, at 2 pm, the latest results of people's appraisal of the performance of the HKSAR Government in various aspects will be released online for the first time.

Please note that everything carried in the POP Site does not represent the stand of the University of Hong Kong. Dr Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, is responsible for everything posted herewith, except for column articles which represent the stand of their authors.