HKU POP SITE releases survey results on people's most familiar political figuresBack
| Press Release on June 5, 2008 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | Latest Figures | Opinion Daily | Commentary | News about POP | | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Abstract The Public Opinion Programme at the University of Hong Kong interviewed 1,007 Hong Kong people between 28 May and 2 June, 2008 by means of a random telephone survey conducted by real interviewers. The survey finds that Donald Tsang, Martin Lee and Anson Chan are definitely the most visible political figures in Hong Kong, leaving aside people's support of them. Looking at the latest "top 10" list alone, people's familiarity with Szeto Wah has surged, while that of Regina Ip has receded. The rankings of other figures on the list have not changed much. Robert Chung, Director of POP, believes that the drop in people's familiarity with Szeto Wah is probably due to the onset of the June 4 anniversary, while the drop in Regina Ip's familiarity is probably due to the fading away of the Legislative Council by-election. Robert Chung adds, the list of "people"s most familiar political figures' is based on 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. The sampling error of all percentages is between +/-2 and 3 percentage points 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 sample size of this survey is 1,007 successful interviews, not 1, 007 x 67.2% response rate. In the past, many media made this mistake. * The maximum sampling error of all percentages is between +/-2 to 3 percentage points at 95% confidence level. "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 percentages not more than +/-3% at 95% confidence level". * When quoting percentages of this survey, journalists should refrain from reporting decimal places, in order to match the precision level of the 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. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Latest Figures POP today releases on schedule via 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 2006 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 Szeto Wah 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 2007 year-end:
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:
# The percentages of respondents who could name Martin Lee and Henry Tang were 30.2% and 29.6% respectively. Hence Lee ranked the 4th while Tang was placed at 5th rank. ## The percentages of respondents who could name Regina Ip and Audrey Eu were 14.3% and 14.2% respectively. Hence Ip ranked the 8th while Eu was placed at 9th rank. ^ The earliest of the past 10 surveys was conducted in October 8-11, 2003. For each survey, those who ranked 50th or beyond and those not on the list are counted as 50th in our calculation of average rankings. In our naming survey conducted between late-May and early-June, respondents could name, unaided, up to 10 political figures whom they knew best. Donald Tsang, Martin Lee, Anson Chan, Szeto Wah and Henry Tang were the top five. The corresponding percentages of respondents who could name these figures were 50%, 38%, 31%, 27% and 26%. The 6th to 10th ranks fell to Rita Fan, James Tien, Regina Ip, Audrey Eu and Emily Lau respectively. Their recognition rates were 18%, 15%, 14%, 14% and 12%. Please refer to the relevant table for the rest of the list. For easy reference, POP Site has already displayed the results of all naming surveys conducted since April 1999. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Opinion Daily 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 October 22 to 25, 2007 while this survey was conducted from May 28 to June 2, 2008. 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, "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, Donald Tsang, Martin Lee and Anson Chan are definitely the most visible political figures in Hong Kong, leaving aside people's support of them. Looking at the latest "top 10" list alone, people's familiarity with Szeto Wah has surged, probably due to the onset of the June 4 anniversary. On the other hand, people's familiarity with Regina Ip has receded, with the fading of the Legislative Council by-election. The rankings of other figures on the list have not changed much. 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 June 10, 2008, Tuesday, between 1pm and 2 pm, 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. 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, May 8 as well as Novemeber 8, 2007. Today, we post it again, so that readers can refresh such development.
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| | Abstract | Latest Figures | Opinion Daily | Commentary | News about POP | | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
