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Commentary
Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, "Our latest figures show that the popularity of the SAR government has remained stable at about 50% after this year's Budget Speech, but the popularity of CE Donald Tsang has recently dropped. To hunt for the reasons, perhaps the best way is to make use of the 'Opinion Daily' section in our POP Site. According to our survey findings broken down into daily figures, the support rate of Donald Tsang reached 80% on April 2, similar to that registered shortly before he was re-elected CE. From April 2 to 10, Tsang's support rate slowly dropped to 75% as the effect of election faded away. Between April 17 and 20, it fluctuated between 70% and 75%. Major events which occurred in this period included CCTV's reports on mainland visitors being cheated in Hong Kong, Donald Tsang receiving his book of appointment in Beijing, the mortuary mix-up of wrong bodies in the Prince of Wales Hospital, and the publication of the Audit Commission's report on the Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute. We leave it open for readers to interpret whether the events have affected the CE's popularity, on top of the fading election effect."
News about POP
POP's normal practice is to release the results of our regular surveys every Tuesday afternoon via our POP Site, except during public holidays, each time with a forecast of the items to be released in the next 7 days. According to schedule, our next release of regular survey findings will be April 26, 2007, Thursday, between 1pm to 2pm, the latest figures on the popularity of SAR and Central Governments, and people's confidence in the future will be released. As next Tuesday is a public holiday, POP Site will release our survey result on May 3, 2007, Wednesday, between 1pm to 2pm when the latest ratings of the Top 10 Legislative Councillors will be released.
Our general practice is to answer all questions on the research design of the surveys published in the POP Site as soon as we receive them, but we will not further comment on the findings. We welcome questions for follow-up purpose, please email them to us at . We will keep such an arrangement under constant review, suggestions most welcome. 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 POP, is responsible for everything posted herewith, except for column articles which represent the stand of their authors.
Since January 2006, we have included in our regular press releases a small educational section for the purpose of sharing our research experience with the readers and the general public, and the subject of our education section today is "About HKUPOP".
About HKUPOP
Again on mapping people's trust and satisfaction of different governments
One important aspect of opinion polling around the world is to monitor people's trust and satisfaction of the government. Shortly after HKUPOP was established, we started to conduct surveys on these aspects. Regarding the development of these surveys, we have explained it separately in our press releases of August 22, November 28, December 14 and 27, 2006 as well as April 3, 2007. Today, we post it again in order to give readers a complete picture of such developments.
(1) Mapping people's trust in different governments
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Due to Hong Kong's very special political status, before the handover in 1997, our survey covered people's trust in the British Hong Kong, British, Chinese, and Taiwan Governments. After the handover, the survey method remained unchanged, but the term British Hong Kong Government was substituted by HKSAR Government, and Chinese Government was substituted by Central Government, while our survey on people's trust in the British Government stopped.
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Our surveys began in December 1992, the wordings used in the questionnaire are "On the whole, do you trust such and such government?". Surveys were conducted once every month, until October 1997 when it was changed to once every two months. It has remained unchanged since then.
(2) Mapping people's satisfaction with the government
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In December 1992, we started to survey people's trust in the British Hong Kong, British, Chinese, and Taiwan Governments. These surveys continued after the handover, but we expanded their scope by introducing people's satisfaction with the HKSAR Government. We take measurements as frequently as we could, using our limited resources. Besides people's general satisfaction with the HKSAR Government, our survey also includes indicators on the government's performance in maintaining economic prosperity, improving people's livelihood, pace of democratic development, and so on.
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Our surveys on people's satisfaction with the HKSAR Government in general began in July 1997. Since then, it has been conducted once every month. The wordings used in the questionnaire are "Are you satisfied with the overall performance of the HKSAR Government?".
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Also from July 1997, we began to survey people's satisfaction with the government's performance in five policy areas using the following questions: "Are you satisfied with the performance of the HKSAR Government in maintaining economic prosperity / improving people's livelihood / developing democracy / protecting human rights and freedom / handling of its relation with the Central Government?" The frequency of these sub-indicator surveys, however, was gradually thinned down from once every month at the beginning, to once every two months between July 2000 and May 2003, and then to once every three months since July 2003, in order to match the changing social conditions.
Before May 2000, the sample size of our regular surveys was set at slightly over 500, we increased it to at least 1,000 after that. The above surveys are no exceptions. The findings of these surveys are now published regularly on-line at our HKU POP Site, while all previous findings published via our newsletter POP Express have also been uploaded on-line in various formats.
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