|
The Public Opinion Programme at the University of Hong Kong interviewed 1,025 Hong Kong people between 9-11 January by means of a random telephone survey conducted by real interviewers. The survey finds that half of the 10 subjective freedom indicators covered in the survey have gone up, half have gone down, while the freedoms of 'holding religious belief', 'moving in and out of Hong Kong' and 'going on strike' have all reached record high since the survey started after the handover. Robert Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed: The freedoms of 'holding religious belief' and 'moving in and out of Hong Kong' continue to cluster at the top, the freedoms to engage in 'academic research' and 'artistic and literary creation' form the second tier, while the other 6 indicators are moving closer to each other. The sampling error of all subjective freedom indicators is between +/-0.08 and 0.14 at 95% confidence level, while the response rate of the survey is 67%.
Points to note:
* The address of the "HKU POP SITE" is http://hkupop.pori.hk, journalists can check out the details of the survey there.
* The figures in this release come from tracking survey conducted by HKUPOP repeated once every six months, they are also good for general reviews of Hong Kong's development. Because the handover of Hong Kong occurred on July 1, it may be more useful to analyze general changes of Hong Kong society using half-yearly rather than yearly figures.
* The sample size of this survey is 1,025 successful interviews, not 1,025 x 67.2% response rate. In the past, many media made this mistake.
* "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. When quoting these figures, journalists can state "sampling error of various ratings not more than +/-0.14 at 95% confidence level" when quoting the above figures. In view of the error margins, 2 decimal places can be used when quoting these rating figures.
* The data of this survey is collected by means of random telephone interviews conducted by real interviewers, not by any interactive voice system (IVS). If a research organization uses "computerized random telephone survey" to camouflage its IVS operation, it should be considered unprofessional.
|
|
* "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.
The survey conducted in early January revealed that, on a scale of 0-10, the freedoms of "religious belief" and "entering or leaving Hong Kong" scored the highest ratings with 8.86 and 8.71 marks, followed by freedoms to engage in "academic research" and "artistic and literary creation", attaining 8.14 and 8.01 marks correspondingly. Freedoms of "speech", "press", "publication" and "procession and demonstration" formed the next tier, with respective scores of 7.37, 7.27, 7.26 and 7.25 marks. Finally, the freedoms of "association" and to "strike" attained 7.14 and 7.04 marks correspondingly.
|
|
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 faster and more accurate information.
For the polling items covered in this press release, the previous survey was conducted from July 3 to 6, 2007 while the last one was conducted from January 9 to 11, 2007. In between these two surveys, there seem only two significant events relevant to the topic, after counting newspaper headlines and commentaries on a daily basis using 25% coverage as the benchmark. Readers can make their own judgment as to whether these and other events recorded in our "Opinion Daily" have any impact on the poll figures.
|
|
Commentary
Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, "Compared to 6 months ago, our latest survey shows that half of the 10 subjective freedom indicators covered in the survey have gone up, half have gone down. Of the 5 ups, 4 have gone beyond sampling errors, they include 'academic research freedom', 'religious freedom', 'artistic and literary creation freedom' and 'freedom to move in and out of Hong Kong'. As for the 5 downs, only the freedom of 'procession and demonstration' has dropped beyond sampling error. The freedoms of 'religious belief', 'moving in and out of Hong Kong' and 'going on strike' have all reached record high since the survey started after the handover. In terms of relative ranking, the freedoms of 'holding religious belief' and 'moving in and out of Hong Kong' continue to cluster at the top, with over 8.5 marks. The freedoms to engage in 'academic research' and 'artistic and literary creation' form the second tier, with over 8.0 marks. The other 6 indicators have moved closer to each other in the last survey, between 7.0 and 7.5 marks. We leave it for our readers to figure out the reasons for the ups and downs of these indicators using detailed records shown in our 'Opinion Daily' feature page."
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 January 22, 2008, Tuesday, between 1pm and 2pm, when the latest popularity figures of CE Donald Tsang and HKSAR Government 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.
For the whole of last year, 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
Subjective "freedom indicators" surveys
Social indicator survey is an important way for the general public to monitor 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. In our research domain, "freedom indicators" comprises 10 main indicators, namely, "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". We have explained the development of the surveys in our press release of January 23 and July 24, 2007. Today, we post it again, so that readers can refresh such development.
-
Between August and November 1997, our surveys on freedom indicators were conducted once every month. It was reduced to once every two months after that. In October 2000, it was further reduced to once every three months. Starting from January 2006, "freedom indicators" are surveyed once every six months to cope with the changing social conditions.
-
For the "freedom indicators" surveys, the question wordings used in the questionnaire are "Please use 0 - 10 to evaluate the extent of the freedom of XX in Hong Kong. 10 indicates absolute freedom, 0 indicates absolute lack of freedom, 5 indicates half-half. What do you think?"
-
Regarding the sample size, between August 1997 and March 2000, the sample size of all surveys was set at slightly over 500. Since May 2000, it was increased to at least 1,000.
-
The findings of our early "freedom indicators" surveys conducted between August 1997 and August 1999 were published in our newsletter POP Express. After our HKU POP Site was established in June 2000, such findings were released online since February 2002 while all previous findings published in our POP Express were also uploaded online in various formats.
|
