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The instant survey suggested that 69% of the respondents perceived the theme of this year's Policy Address "A New Direction for Hong Kong" to be in line with the current needs of society, 9% thought the opposite. Besides, 47% said Donald Tsang's Policy Address delivered today had honoured his pledges made during the CE election while 14% held an opposite view. Meanwhile, the Chief Executive mentioned that over the past decade, there had been too many controversies and too little consensus, thus losing many opportunities. For this, 62% agreed to his view whereas 22% disagreed. The survey further asked those respondents who said "agree" and "half-half" whose fault it was, 20% said "Local democrats", 8% said "Tung Chee-hwa's Government". Those who opted for "Colonial Government", "Central Government" or "Others" accounted for 6%, 6% and 5% respectively. Lastly, Donald Tsang says in two consecutive years that CE needs to face three challenges, including sustainable economic development, constitutional development, and development of a harmonious society. Findings showed that a respective of 57%, 41% and 20% of the respondents thought he could tackle the problem of sustainable economic development, development of a harmonious society and constitutional development well, whereas 21%, 35% and 51% of the respondents thought Donald Tsang could not tackle these problems in corresponding order.
In terms of people's overall rating of the Policy Address, as well as the change of their confidence towards Hong Kong's future, the figures are summarized below:
| Date
of survey |
Sub-sample base# |
Overall response rate |
Sampling error of rating* |
Sampling error of %* |
Appraisal of Policy Address: Satisfaction rate** |
Appraisal of Policy Address: Half-half |
Appraisal
of Policy Address: Dissatisfaction rate** |
Satisfaction rating of Policy Address |
| 10/10/07 |
602 |
69.9% |
+/- 1.6 |
+/- 4% |
52% |
29% |
10% |
65.2 |
| 11/10/06 |
445 |
60.7% |
+/- 2.0 |
+/- 5% |
30% |
37% |
22% |
55.8 |
| 12/10/05 |
377 |
66.1% |
+/- 1.9 |
+/- 5% |
48% |
33% |
9% |
66.4 |
| 12/1/05 |
391 |
66.5% |
+/- 2.4 |
+/- 5% |
38% |
30% |
20% |
56.3 |
| 7/1/04 |
381 |
67.5% |
+/- 2.4 |
+/- 5% |
25% |
26% |
33% |
49.3 |
| 8/1/03^ |
377 |
67.3% |
+/- 2.6 |
+/- 5% |
22% |
29% |
27% |
51.6 |
| 10/10/01 |
433 |
66.0% |
+/- 2.2 |
+/- 5% |
29% |
33% |
27% |
56.7 |
| 11/10/00 |
262 |
69.7% |
+/- 2.8 |
+/- 6% |
25% |
28% |
31% |
55.2 |
| 6/10/99 |
236 |
54.5% |
+/- 2.8 |
+/- 6% |
31% |
30% |
25% |
57.3 |
| 7/10/98 |
508 |
56.5% |
-- |
+/- 4% |
22% |
35% |
35% |
-- |
| 8/10/97 |
534 |
62.9% |
-- |
+/- 4% |
45% |
30% |
14% |
-- |
|
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* "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.
# Excluding respondents who said they would not answer because they had not heard of the policy address. Because of the smaller sample size, the sampling error has increased accordingly.
^ The 2003 Policy Address instant poll was conducted for two days. Only figures registered in the first day of fieldwork are listed in this table for direct comparison and analysis. Aggregate results are available in our "HKU POP SITE".
Results showed that, among sub-sample of respondents who had heard of the Policy Address, 52% were satisfied with it, 29% opted for "half-half" and 10% were dissatisfied, while the average rating registered for the Policy Address was 65.2 marks. Besides, excluding those who said they would not answer because they had not heard of the content of the policy address, 53% said their confidence in the future of Hong Kong had increased, 31% opted for "no change", whilst 7% said their confidence had dropped.
Recent figures on Donald Tsang's popularity are summarized as follows:
| Date of survey |
6-10/8/07 |
20-24/8/07 |
4-7/9/07 |
17-21/9/07 |
2-5/10/07^ |
10/10/07 |
Latest change^^ |
| Sample base |
1,013 |
1,010 |
1,025 |
1,008 |
1,008 |
1,023 |
-- |
| Overall response rate |
63.8% |
65.2% |
66.0% |
65.5% |
65.4% |
69.9% |
-- |
Sampling error of
ratings
(at 95% confidence level)* |
+/-1.0 |
+/-1.0 |
+/-1.2 |
+/-1.0 |
+/-1.2 |
+/- 1.0 |
-- |
Sampling error of
percentages
(at 95% confidence level)* |
+/-3% |
+/-3% |
+/-3% |
+/-3% |
+/-3% |
+/-3% |
-- |
| Rating of CE Donald Tsang |
66.1 |
66.7 |
65.3 |
65.4 |
65.8 |
64.4 |
-1.4 |
| Vote of confidence in CE Donald Tsang |
70% |
64% |
68% |
64% |
63% |
62% |
-1% |
| Vote of no confidence in CE Donald Tsang |
15% |
14% |
15% |
15% |
15% |
14% |
-1% |
| Satisfaction rate of Tsang's policy direction** |
-- |
53% |
-- |
-- |
-- |
51% |
-2% |
| Dissatisfaction rate of Tsang's policy direction** |
-- |
9% |
-- |
-- |
-- |
10% |
+1% |
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Commentary
Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, "According to our instant poll, people's satisfaction with Donald Tsang's third Policy Address is the highest among all Addresses since the handover. Counting those who knew the content of the Address, 52% said they were satisfied. However, rating on a scale of 0-100, this year's Address is still a little behind that of Tsang's first Address. Look at it from a different angle, the percentage of those who have heard of the Address in our instant poll has also gone up, this increase in awareness can also be taken as another indicator of success. Also among those who have heard of the Address, quite like two years ago, 53% said their confidence in Hong Kong's future has increased. Because there are many policy initiatives in this year's Policy Address, we are not able to cover them in our instant poll. Rather, we have concentrated on some of the broad ideas proposed by Tsang. On the theme of "a new direction for Hong Kong", among all respondents interviewed, 69% said it concurred with the need of society. This is positive response, but still 2 percentage points lower than last year's theme of "proactive pragmatic always people first". Over two consecutive years, Tsang has depicted three challenges for him and his government. Our instant polls over the past two years show that people are quite confident that Tsang can resolve economic problems, fairly confident that he can create a harmonious society, but not confident that he can bring about democratic development. The three confidence figures last year were 44%, 40% and 22% last year. This year, they became 57%, 41% and 20%. In this year's Address, Tsang mentioned there had been too many controversies and too little consensus in Hong Kong over the past ten years. Our instant poll shows that most people agreed to this view, but when analyzed together with the reasons that people chose, about one-fifth did not agree with this view, about one-fifth agreed and blamed the democrats, about one-fifth agreed and blamed various governments, about one-fifth agreed but did not know what had gone wrong, the remainders took other views. The division of public opinion into these 5 types deserves some thoughts. Finally, among the people interviewed, less than half believed Tsang has honoured his election pledges, and his popularity figures have not gained any ground. This may mean that many people are not yet familiar with his Policy Address, and have taken a wait-and-see attitude."
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 16, Tuesday, between 1pm and 2pm, when the latest popularity figures of CE Donald Tsang and Principal Officials 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 <[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
The development and operation of Policy Address instant surveys
HKUPOP was established in 1991, we began our first Policy Address instant survey in October 1992, and our operation has not changed much since then. By "instant survey", we mean a survey which begins on the same day when the Policy Address is announced, in order to gauge the immediate reaction of the people. We have explained the development of our Policy Address instant surveys in our press release of October 12, 2006. Today we post it again, so that readers can refresh their memory.
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Our instant surveys comprise a set of core questions asked every year for repeated measurement, plus another set of ad hoc questions designed to match the content of each year's Policy Address. Core questions include CE's popularity, people's overall appraisal of the Address, and its effect on people's confidence in the future of Hong Kong.
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Regarding the sample size, since 1992, it is always set at slightly over 1,000.
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If case we have media sponsorship, our results would be released immediately, even on a real time basis. Otherwise, we generally announce the findings online through our website on the following day. The findings from our Policy Address instant surveys conducted on or before November 2000 have been published in our newsletter POP Express, and they are available in our POP Site in various formats.
Herewith an outline of our operation for the Policy Address instant survey of 2007:
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After the HKSAR government announced the date of Policy Address, we started our planning for the instant survey.
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About one month ago, we began to keep track of news about the Policy Address, in order to lay the ground work of questionnaire design.
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About one week ago, we began our manpower deployment and internal preparation.
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On the day CE announces the address, we monitored the media and the Internet, including the entire address and CE's subsequent press conferences, and then drafted the questionnaire.
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Our random telephone interviews began at 6 p.m. on that day, involving nearly 40 interviewers and staff. The interviews finished at 11 p.m., after collecting more than 1,000 samples.
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Data verification and quantitative analyses followed immediately, together with the drafting of the press release.
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On the following day, the survey findings were verified again, while our POP Site was re-designed. Our press release was compiled, proofread, and then released for public consumption.
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