HKU POP SITE releases survey results on people's most familiar political figuresBack

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| Detailed Findings (People's Most Familiar Political Figures) |

(1) Sponsored by a number of media organizations, the Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong, has already begun to conduct its rolling poll on the Legislative Council by-election for the Hong Kong Island Geographical Constituency. The methodology is the same as previous rolling polls and to be conducted every day. Findings of which are released to sponsors for exclusive use on the same day, and are then uploaded onto the "HKU POP SITE" (http://hkupop.pori.hk) for public consumption after no less than 48 hours. Organizations wishing to join the sponsorship of these surveys are welcome to contact Miss Chau or Miss Pang at 3921-2700. POP has decided to upload the frequency analyses of the rolling poll up to November 6 onto the POP Site tomorrow, November 9, for public consumption, and to upload the cross-tabulation analyses using the same dataset online on November 10, day after tomorrow.

(2) With effective from 22 October 2007, POP has been relocated from Meng Wah Complex at the University of Hong Kong to 5/F, Kennedy Town Centre, 23 Belcher's Street, Kennedy Town, Hong Kong. The general line is changed to 3921-2700. The fax number, email address and website address remain unchanged.

POP today releases on schedule via the POP Site the results of our surveys on people's most familiar political figures. This survey has been conducted for many years, but its results were only released through our publication POP Express in the past, until October last year when we began to release the results online. In between 1994 and 2005, our "People's most familiar political figures" surveys were conducted and released in the form of "Top 10 political figures", using the same method as our usual "Top 10" or "Top 5" series, which involved both naming and rating stages. Starting from October 2005, we decided to simplify the "Top 10 political figures" survey by just recording and analyzing the "naming" results, because we have already developed over time many rating surveys which covered the ratings of CE, Government officials, members of Legislative and Executive Councils, and so on. As for the rating part, we decided only to conduct supplementary rating surveys on those who are listed among the top 10 most popular figures but who are not covered in our other rating surveys. Take our latest survey as an example, our supplementary rating survey of Anson Chan and Regina Ip will be conducted later this month. We will upload the results onto our POP Site as soon as they are ready. Besides, in our presentation of findings, different from the other "Top 10" rating series, we introduced rankings from 1 to 50 for "people's most familiar political figures", as well as average accumulative rankings calculated from the past 10 surveys which spanned over nearly five years, in order to indicate the ups-and-downs of these political figures in the long run. Please refer to our POP Site for details. Herewith the contact information of our latest survey. As a general practice, all figures in the latest survey have been weighted according to provisional figures obtained from the Census and Statistics Department regarding the gender-age distribution of the Hong Kong population in mid-2007: 

Herewith the result of our latest survey on "people's most familiar political figures", other rankings beyond the "Top 10" can be found in the POP Site:

In our naming survey conducted in late-October, respondents could name, unaided, up to 10 political figures whom they knew best. Anson Chan, Regina Ip, Donald Tsang, Martin Lee and Henry Tang were the top five. The corresponding percentages of respondents who could name these figures were 44%, 33%, 32%, 30% and 30%. The 6th to 10th ranks fell to James Tien, Rita Fan, Audrey Eu, Selina Chow and Jasper Tsang respectively. Their recognition rates were 19%, 18%, 12%, 11% and 10%. Please refer to the relevant table for the rest of the list. For easy reference, the POP Site has already displayed the results of all naming surveys conducted since April 1999.

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 2007, the previous survey was conducted from April 17 to 20, 2007 while this survey was conducted from October 22 to 25. 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.

Commentary

Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, "The purpose of studying people's most familiar figures over time is to use the ups and downs of these figures to indicate the changing political ecology. According to our latest survey, Anson Chan, Regina Ip, Donald Tsang, Martin Lee and Henry Tang are definitely the most visible political figures in Hong Kong, leaving aside people's support of them. Because of their participation in the Legislative Council by-election, people's familiarity with Anson Chan and Regina Ip has shot up from 9th and 36th respectively half year ago, to the 1st and 2nd place this time, suddenly surpassing CE Donald Tsang. At the other end, the ranking of Arthur Li plunged 40 places from 8th last time to 48th this time, while Alan Leong also dropped 12 places from 6th to 18th, as part of our changing political environment. It should be noted, however, that our ranking of "people"s most familiar political figures' is based on our surveys which requested respondents to name local political figures without prompting. This kind of familiarity measurement is not the same as prompted ratings. In other words, those high on the list may not be the most supported figures, while those lower down may have a different ranking if we use a prompting method. However, those who scored best in unprompted surveys are no doubt the most well-known political figures in Hong Kong. As for the reasons affecting the ups and downs of these rankings, 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 November 12, 2007, Monday, between 1pm and 2pm, when the third round District Council election survey will be released. Then, on November 13, 2007, Tuesday, between 1pm and 2pm, POP will release the latest popularity figures of CE Donald Tsang and Principal Officials under the accountability system. 

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.

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

People's most familiar political figures survey

HKUPOP conducted the first "Top 10 political figures naming survey" in April 1994, in order to study people's knowledge with political figures. Same as other "Top 10" and "Top 5" series, we take it to be part of our social responsibility to conduct such surveys, not because of any political preferences. We have explained the development of this series of surveys in our press release of October 24, 2006 as well as May 8, 2007. Today, we post it again, so that readers can refresh such development.

• In April 1994, HKUPOP began our regular naming and rating surveys of "Top 10 political figures", including Hong Kong people's recognition and extent of support towards different local political figures. Because we have gradually developed over time many rating surveys which covered the ratings of CE and Principal Officials under the accountability system, the top 10 Legislative Councillors, people's most familiar non-official members of the Executive Council, the top 10 members of the HKSARG Preparatory Committee, and so on, in order to avoid duplications and to spare more resources and manpower for other survey topics, in October 2005, we decided to concentrate only on recording and analyzing the "naming" results. As for the rating part, we decided only to conduct supplementary rating surveys on those who are listed among the top 10 most popular figures but who are not covered in our other rating surveys. Besides, as different from the other "Top 10" rating series, we also introduced rankings from 1 to 50 for "people's most familiar political figures", as well as average accumulative rankings calculated from the past 10 surveys which spanned over nearly five years, in order to indicate the ups-and-downs of these political figures in the long run.
  
  

• From the beginning to December 1999, our "Top 10 political figures" survey, the forerunner of our "most familiar political figures" survey, was conducted once every 4 months. It was then gradually changed to once every 6 months in order to match with society's development. The question wordings used in the 1994 surveys were: "Please name up to 10 politicians that you are most familiar with." From 1995 onwards, they were changed to: "Please name up to 10 political figures that you are most familiar with." 
  
  

• Regarding sample size, from the beginning to April 2000, the sample size was set at slightly over 500. From October 2000 onwards, it was increased to at least 1,000.
  
  

• The findings of "Top 10 political figures" surveys since September 1996 were published in our newsletter POP Express. After our HKU POP Site was established in June 2000, this survey is released online today for the first time, while previous findings published in our POP Express have also been uploaded on-line in various formats.

| Special Announcement | Latest Figures | Opinion Daily | Commentary | News about POP | About HKUPOP |
| Detailed Findings (People's Most Familiar Political Figures) |