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Since January 2007, the Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong has launched a feature page called "Opinion Daily" at the "HKU POP SITE"
(http://hkupop.pori.hk). It records significant events on a daily basis, as well as provides certain opinion poll figures on those separate days. Our purpose is to provide accurate information for readers to judge by themselves the reasons for the ups and downs of opinion figures. "Opinion Daily" began to operate on January 17, 2007. At the beginning, it only recorded significant events and the popularity figures of the Chief Executive for the previous few months. As of today, it gives a chronology of events back from May 1, 2006, and many other poll figures since January 1, 2006, and its content is ever increasing.
In July 2007, POP collaborated with Wisers Information Limited whereby Wisers supplies to POP since July 24 on a daily basis a record of significant events of the day, according to a research method designed by POP. These daily entries would be uploaded to the "Opinion Daily" feature page as soon as they are verified by POP, in order to provide readers with swifter and more accurate information.
Starting today, other than reading the chronology of significant events, readers can also check on the results of 9 different polling items compiled by POP, including the popularity of the Chief Executive, the HKSAR government, and the Secretaries of Departments under the accountability system. In near future, "Opinion Daily" will be regularly updated and expanded in order to promote the science of opinion polling.
Besides, since mid-August 2007, in POP's regular press releases, we have listed some of the more significant events which happened in between two surveys for readers to make their own judgment whether these events have any effect on polling figure changes.
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Regarding the social indicators, results obtained in late August showed that, on a scale of 0-10, Hong Kong's degree of "freedom" scored the highest rating with 7.61 marks. "Civilization", "public order" and "corruption-free practices" followed behind, with respective scores of 7.39, 7.37 and 7.29 marks. "Stability", "efficiency", "compliance with the rule of law" and "prosperity" formed the next tier, scoring 7.18, 7.08, 7.07 and 7.06 marks respectively. Meanwhile, the ratings of "social welfare sufficiency", "equality" and "democracy" were 6.42, 6.30 and 6.25 marks correspondingly. Last of all, "fairness" scored 6.01 marks.
As for the 2 rule of law sub-indicators, the impartiality of the courts scored 7.03 marks, while the rating of the fairness of the judicial system was 6.90 marks. Meanwhile, the latest popularity rating of Chief Justice Andrew Li Kwok-nang, a representative figure of the judicial system, was 63.8 marks, on a scale of 0-100.
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Commentary
Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, "Our latest finding shows that with the exception of 'equality' and 'stability', all other subjective social indicators in our list of 12 have gone up over the past 6 months. Among them, 'efficiency', 'democracy', 'civilization' and 'public order' registered the biggest rise, while other changes are all within sampling errors. Because numerous events have happened in the past 6 months, and because of the wide scope of social indicators, readers can make use of our detailed records displayed in our 'Opinion Daily' to decide what factors are affecting the ups and downs of these indicators. However, it may be worth noting that 6 of the 12 indicators now stand at record high since the middle or end of 1997, namely, 'freedom', 'civilization', 'public order', 'corruption-free', 'rule of law' and 'prosperity'. This shows that people are fairly satisfied with the current social conditions. Nonetheless, in terms of long term development, 'social welfare', 'equality', 'democracy' and 'fairness' have consistently trailed behind other indicators over the past two years at a considerable distance. This deserves some attention."
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 September 11, 2007, Tuesday, between 1 pm to 2 pm., when the latest popularity figures of CE Donald Tsang and Principal Officials under the accountability system will be released.
It is our general practice 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 <[email protected]>. 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.
Starting from January 2006, we have included in our regular press releases a small educational section for the purpose of general civic education, so that we can share our experience with the general public. The subject of our education section today is "About HKUPOP".
About HKUPOP
Subjective social and rule of law indicators
Social indicator survey is a common way to monitor and measure a society's development. HKUPOP first conducted such surveys around the handover of Hong Kong in 1997, in order to monitor the new development of Hong Kong society. We explained the development of such surveys in our press release dated on September 5, 2006 and March 8, 2007. Today, we release it again, so that readers can have a more comprehensive picture of such development. In our research domain, "social indicators" comprises 12 main indicators, namely, "democracy", "freedom, "prosperity", "stability", "fairness", "civilization", "corruption-free", "equality", "efficiency", "social welfare", "public order" and "rule of law", and 2 sets of "freedom sub-indicators" and "rule of law sub-indicators". The first set comprises "freedom of speech", "freedom of press", "freedom of publication", "freedom of procession and demonstration", "freedom of association", "freedom to strike", "freedom to enter or leave Hong Kong", "freedom to engage in academic research", "freedom to engage in artistic and literary creation" and "freedom of religious belief", while the latter set comprises "fairness of the judicial system" and "impartiality of the courts". Herewith the details of our "social indicators" and "rule of law sub-indicators" surveys:
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Between June and November 1997, our surveys of social and rule of law indicators were conducted once every month. It was then changed to once every two months, until it was changed again to once every three months beginning from July 2000. Starting from October 2005, its frequency was gradually changed to once every six months, in order to match society's development.
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For the "social indicators" and "rule of law sub-indicators" surveys, the wordings used in the questionnaire are "If you were to use 0-10 to evaluate whether Hong Kong is a such and such society, with 10 indicating absolutely such and such, 0 indicating absolutely not such and such, 5 indicating half-half, how would you rate Hong Kong?" During our "rule of law sub-indicators" surveys, we also include one additional question on the rating of the Chief Justice, wordings being "Please use a scale of 0-100 to rate your extent of support to the Chief Justice Andrew Li Kwok-nang, with 0 indicating absolutely not supportive, 100 indicating absolutely supportive and 50 indicating half-half. How would you rate the Chief Justice Andrew Li Kwok-nang?"
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Regarding sample size, between July 1997 and March 2000, the sample size of all surveys was set at slightly over 500. From May 2000 onwards, it was increased to at least 1,000.
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The findings of our early social and rule of law indicators conducted between June 1997 and June 1998 were published in our newsletter POP Express. After our HKU POP Site was established in June 2000, such findings were released on-line starting from January and July 2002 respectively, while all previous findings published in our POP Express were also uploaded on-line in various formats.
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