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In January 2007, POP opened a feature page called "Opinion Daily" at the "POP Site", to record significant events and selected polling figures on a day-to-day basis. Our purpose is to provide readers with accurate information so that they can judge by themselves the reasons for the ups and downs of different opinion figures. When "Opinion Daily" began to operate on January 17, 2007, it only contained significant events and popularity figures of the Chief Executive over the past few months. As of today, it contains a chronology of events starting from May 1, 2006, and many poll figures registered since January 1, 2006. Readers can now 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, the content of "Opinion Daily" will continue to expand, in order to promote the science of opinion polling.
In July 2007, POP collaborated with Wisers Information Limited whereby Wisers supplies to POP since July 24 each day a record of significant events of that day, according to the 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.
In August 2007, POP began to include in its regular press releases a list of significant events which happened in between two surveys, so that readers can make their own judgment on whether these events have any effect on the ups and downs of the polling figures. This press release is no exception.
For the polling items covered in this press release, the previous survey was conducted from June 15 to 21, 2007 while this survey was conducted from September 17 to 21, 2007. In between these two surveys, herewith the significant events selected from counting newspaper headlines and commentaries on a daily basis and covered by at least 25% of the local newspaper articles. Readers can make their own judgment if these significant events have any impacts to different polling figures.
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Commentary
Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, "Our survey shows that people's satisfaction with Legco members in general has increased over the last three months, to reach record high since the first SAR Legco began its operation in 1998. Satisfaction rate now stands at about one-third, while dissatisfaction rate at about one-fifth. However, these figures only indicate people's satisfaction with Legco members on the whole, including those returned by geographical as well as functional constituencies. They are not direct measurements of individual Legco members' performance. As for people's satisfaction with the two disciplinary forces, the figures seem to have remained quite stable. People's satisfaction with the Hong Kong Police Force also has remained high, just 1 percentage point down from its record high last time. Dissatisfaction rate continues to stay near zero. People's satisfaction with the PLA Hong Kong Garrison has slightly increased by 3 percentage points compared to three months ago, dissatisfaction rate also stays near zero. As for the reasons affecting the ups and downs of these figures, we leave it to our readers to form their own judgment using the detailed records displayed in our 'Opinion Daily'."
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 October 8, 2007, Monday, between 1pm to 2pm, when findings on people's expectation of CE's Policy Address will be released. Then on October 9, 2007, Tuesday, between 1pm to 2pm, POP will release the first round District Council election survey.
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.
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". In the near future, we will keep on stepping up our effort in promoting general civic education to enhance our POP Site accordingly.
About HKUPOP
People's satisfaction with the performance of Legislative Council members, Hong Kong Police Force and PLA's Hong Kong Garrison survey
Regarding the development of our surveys on people's satisfaction with the performance of Legislative Council members, Hong Kong Police Force and PLA's Hong Kong Garrison, we have explained it in our press release of October 3, 2006, January 2, April 10 and July 10, 2007. Today, we post it again to give readers a more comprehensive picture of such developments.
(1) Mapping people's satisfaction with the performance of Legislative Council members
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The First Legislative Council of the HKSAR was formed one year after the handover of Hong Kong. In July 1998, HKUPOP began our regular surveys on people's satisfaction with the performance of Legislative Council members in general. When the Second Legislative Council was formed two years later, we simply changed the name of the survey from "First Legco" to "Second Legco", without changing the research design. In October 2004, the "Third Legco" subsequently replaced the "Second Legco". From the beginning to its end, the "First Legco" surveys were conducted once every month. For the "Second Legco" surveys, the frequency was changed to once every two months until July 2003. Thereafter, the "Third Legco" surveys are conducted once every three months to cope with the changing social conditions.
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The question wordings used in the questionnaire are "Are you satisfied with the overall performance of the members of HKSAR Legislative Council?". Interviewers then probed respondents' degree of satisfaction and respondents could choose a single response ranged from "very satisfied", "quite satisfied", "half-half", "not quite satisfied" to "very dissatisfied".
(2) Mapping people's satisfaction with the performance of the Hong Kong Police Force and PLA's Hong Kong Garrison
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Shortly after the handover of Hong Kong in July 1997, HKUPOP began our regular surveys on people's satisfaction with the performance of the Hong Kong Police Force and PLA's Hong Kong Garrison. From the beginning, the surveys were conducted once every month. Then in September 2000 the frequency was changed to once every two months. Since October 2003, the surveys have been conducted once every three months to cope with the changing social conditions.
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The question wordings used in the questionnaire are "Are you satisfied with the performance of the Hong Kong Police Force / People's Liberation Army Hong Kong Garrison?" Interviewers then probed respondents' degree of satisfaction and respondents could choose a single response ranged from "very satisfied", "quite satisfied", "half-half", "not quite satisfied" to "very dissatisfied".
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. |
