HKU POP SITE releases the latest results of subjective freedom indicatorsBack
| Press Release on July 29, 2008 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Special Announcement | Abstract | Latest Figures | Opinion Daily | Commentary | News about POP | | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Special Announcement The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong is now responsible for designing and maintaining the Chinese homepage of the WorldPublicOpinion.org (WPO). WPO was initiated by and is managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, USA. At present WPO consists of research centers in 22 countries or regions. The English website of the WPO is located at http://www.worldpublicopinion.org, while its Chinese website is located at http://wpo.hkpop.hk which can be accessed via the HKU POP Site at http://hkupop.pori.hk or Hong Kong People's Opinion Platform at http://www.hkpop.hk. POP will be responsible for translating WPO's research reports and press releases into Chinese, for global release. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract The Public Opinion Programme at the University of Hong Kong interviewed 1,007 Hong Kong people from 23 to 25 July by means of a random telephone survey conducted by real interviewers. The survey finds that of the 10 subjective freedom indicators covered in the survey, 7 have gone up, 2 have gone down and 1 remains unchanged. Of the 7 ups, 4 have gone beyond sampling errors, they include the freedoms to 'strike', of 'publication', 'speech' and 'press'. Among the four, the 'freedom to strike' has reached record high since the survey started after the handover. As for the 2 downs, only the 'freedom to move in and out of Hong Kong' has dropped beyond sampling error. In terms of relative ranking, the freedom of 'religious belief' and 'enter or leave Hong Kong' used to stay at the top, but the latter is moving down to the second tier in this survey, which used to be occupied by free engagement in 'academic research' and 'artistic and literary creation'. The other 6 indicators cluster to form the third tier, about 1.5 marks below the top one. Robert Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, believes that the 'freedom to strike' has increased because of recent strikes, while the 'freedom to move in and out of Hong Kong' has dropped because of Immigration Department's repeated decisions to refuse certain people's entry to Hong Kong. The sampling error of all subjective freedom indicators is between +/-0.09 and 0.13 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 1,007 successful interviews, not 1,007 x 67.4% 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 +/-0.13 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. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Latest Figures POP today releases on schedule via the "POP SITE" the latest results of subjective freedom indicators. All the figures 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 contact information for the latest survey:
Recent trends of these indicators are summarized as follows:
** Such changes have gone beyond the sampling errors at 95% confidence level, meaning that they are statistically significant prima facie. However, whether numerical differences are statistically significant or not is not the same as whether they are practically useful or meaningful. The survey conducted in late July revealed that, on a scale of 0-10, the freedom of "religious belief" scored the highest rating with 8.82 marks. Freedom of "entering or leaving Hong Kong" came second with 8.43 marks, followed by freedoms to engage in "academic research" and "artistic and literary creation", attaining 8.15 and 8.01 marks correspondingly. Freedoms of "speech", "publication", "press", to "strike" and of "procession and demonstration" formed the next tier, with respective scores of 7.53, 7.50, 7.40, 7.39 and 7.33 marks. Finally, the freedom of "association" attained 7.20 marks. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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 faster and more accurate information. For the polling items covered in this press release, the previous survey was conducted from January 9 to 11, 2008 while the latest one was conducted from July 23 to 25, 2008. In between these two surveys, there seem only six 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.
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| Commentary Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, "Compared to 6 months ago, our latest survey shows that of the 10 subjective freedom indicators covered in the survey, 7 have gone up, 2 have gone down and 1 remains unchanged. Of the 7 ups, 4 have gone beyond sampling errors, they include the freedoms to 'strike', of 'publication', 'speech' and 'press'. Among the four, the 'freedom to strike' has reached record high since the survey started after the handover, probably due to recent strikes. As for the 2 downs, only the 'freedom to move in and out of Hong Kong' has dropped beyond sampling error, probably due to Immigration Department's repeated decisions to refuse certain people's entry to Hong Kong. In terms of relative ranking, the freedom of 'religious belief' and 'enter or leave Hong Kong' used to stay at the top, but the latter is moving down to the second tier in this survey, which used to be occupied by free engagement in 'academic research' and 'artistic and literary creation'. The other 6 indicators cluster to form the third tier, about 1.5 marks below the top one. 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 August 5, 2008, Tuesday, between 1pm and 2pm, when the latest ratings of Top 5 members of Executive Council and the popularity of Under Secretaries and Political Assistants will be released. POP will also follow the rhythm of the WorldPublicOpinion.org (WPO) to globally release the Chinese versions of WPO's press releases regularly, via our "World Public Opinion Platform" accessible through our POP Site and the "Hong Kong People's Opinion Platform" at http://www.hkpop.hk. 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". 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, July 24, 2007 and January 15, 2008. Today, we post it again, so that readers can refresh such development.
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| | Special Announcement | Abstract | Latest Figures | Opinion Daily | Commentary | News about POP | | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
