HKU POP SITE releases survey findings on the Executive Councilors, Under Secretaries and Political AssistantsBack
| Press Release on November 7, 2008 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Special Announcement | Abstract | (1) Top 5 members of Executive Council | (2) Under Secretaries and Political Assistants | | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Special Announcement Starting from July this year, the Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong has been responsible for designing and maintaining the Chinese homepage of the WorldPublicOpinion.org (WPO). WPO was initiated and managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland. At present WPO consists of research centers from over 20 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 release WPO's next round of international polling results next Tuesday, including findings from the Greater China Region. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract The Public Opinion Programme at the University of Hong Kong conducted a double stage survey on the ranking of non-official Executive Councillors, Under Secretaries and Political Assistants last month, by means of random telephone surveys conducted by real interviewers. The surveys find that after Selina Chow and Jasper Tsang resigned from the Executive Council, and Lau Kong-wah joined the Council, the popularity ratings of people's most familiar non-official Executive Councillors have generally dropped. Among them, Ronald Arculli and Anthony Cheung both have record low ratings, while Leung Chun-ying and Cheng Yiu-tong have their new lows since April 2005. This shows that the downward trend of the government's popularity has also affected that of the Councillors. In terms of relative ranking, Ronald Arculli continues to top the list, Anthony Cheung comes back to become the 2nd, Cheng Yiu-tong moves one step up to become the 3rd, while Leung Chun-ying drops one position to become the 4th. Lau Kong-wah enters the list for the first time to become the 5th. Had Fan Hung-ling not been suspended of duties during our rating stage, he might well have joined the "top 5", support rating unknown. Regarding Under Secretaries and Political Assistants, it was found that 2 out of 8 Under Secretaries and 3 out of 9 Political Assistants receive zero recognition. This means that Hong Kong people are not at all familiar with the team, although the situation is slightly better than that of 3 months ago. More than five months have elapsed since the government announced the appointment of these officials, but almost one-third of them still have zero recognition, which is far from satisfactory. The sampling errors of the ratings registered fall between +/-1.3 and 1.8 while the response rate of the rating survey is 70%. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (1) Top 5 members of Executive Council POP today releases on schedule via the "POP SITE" the latest ratings of the Top 5 members of Executive Council. As a general practice, all figures have already 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-2008. Herewith the contact information for the latest survey:
The research design of our "Top 5 Executive Councilors" is similar to that of our "Top 10" series, it is explained in detail under "Survey Method" in our web page. The top councillors listed in our latest survey were all those who obtained the highest unprompted mentions in our first stage naming survey conducted in late-Ocotober. In that survey, respondents could name, unaided, up to 5 non-official Executive Councillors whom they knew best. Leung Chun-ying, Lau Kong-wah, Fan Hung-ling, Ronald Arculli, Cheng Yiu-tong, Anthony Cheung, Bernard Chan, Lo Chung Wing, Laura Cha and Leong Che-hung were the ten most frequently mentioned councillors. Please refer to the relevant table in our website for the rest of the list. Those 6 who were named most frequently then entered into the second stage rating survey. Since Fan Hung-ling ask for his suspension of duties during the naming survey and was accepted by Chief Executive on 24 October, hence POP does not include him in the rating survey even he has actually obtained quite a high nominations in first stage. During the second stage rating survey conducted in end of October, respondents were asked to rate each short-listed councillor in turn using a 0-100 scale. 0 indicates absolutely no support, 100 indicates absolute support, and 50 means half-half. After calculation, the bottom 1 councillors in terms of recognition rate was dropped; the remaining 5 were then ranked according to their support ratings attained to become the top 5 Executive Councillors. Recent ratings of the top 5 members of Executive Council are summarized as follows:
** Ratings with recognition rates not reaching top 5 in either stage of survey are not available. [ ] Number in square brackets indicates rankings. # Such changes have gone beyond the sampling errors at the 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 latest survey conducted in late-October showed that Ronald Arculli was the most popularly supported non-official Executive Councillor, attaining 54.9 marks. The 2nd rank went to Anthony Cheung with 53.7 marks. The 3rd and 4th ranks went to Cheng Yiu-tong and Leung Chun-ying, with 48.6 and 47.3 marks respectively. Lau Kong-wah occupied the 5th rank, attaining 46.5 marks. The mean score obtained by these top 5 non-official Executive Councillors was 50.2 marks. For this latest survey, Bernard Chan obtained a support rating of 53.2 marks, but they were dropped due to his relatively low recognition rate. The overall ratings ranked according to results obtained over the past year are tabulated as follows:
** "Overall ranking" is first determined by their number of times on top 10, and then their average ratings. ^ Ratings with recognition rates not reaching top 5 in either stage of survey are not available. The overall rankings in the past year showed that only one non-official Executive Councillors have been on the list for four times. He is Leung Chun-ying who achieved an average rating of 51.1 marks, Ronald Arculli, Selina Chow and Jasper Tsang have been on the list for three times with average rating of 59.8, 55.7 and 50.6. Anthony Cheung and Cheng Yiu-tong has been on the list for two times and occupied the fifth and sixth place with 55.1 and 52.3 marks. Three non-official Executive Councillors have been on the list once. They were Bernard Chan, David Li and Lau Kong-wah who ranked 7th to 9th with 55.5, 52.8 and 46.5 marks respectively. Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, "This is the first survey conducted after Selina Chow and Jasper Tsang resigned from the Executive Council, and Lau Kong-wah joined the Council. Compared to three months ago, the popularity ratings of people's most familiar non-official Executive Councillors have generally dropped. Among them, Ronald Arculli and Anthony Cheung both have record low ratings, while Leung Chun-ying and Cheng Yiu-tong have their new lows since April 2005. This shows that the downward trend of the government's popularity has also affected that of the Councillors. In terms of relative ranking, Ronald Arculli continues to top the list, Anthony Cheung comes back to become the 2nd, Cheng Yiu-tong moves one step up to become the 3rd, while Leung Chun-ying drops one position to become the 4th. Lau Kong-wah enters the list for the first time to become the 5th. It should be noted, however, that our list of 'top five' only includes non-official councillors best known to the public, ranked according to their support ratings. Some of the other councillors may well have very high or low support ratings, but because they are not the most well-known councillors, they do not appear on the list by design. In our latest round of survey, had Fan Hung-ling not been suspended of duties during our rating stage, he might well have joined the 'top 5', support rating unknown. As for the reasons affecting the ups and downs of these popularity ratings, we leave it to our readers to form their own judgment using the detailed records displayed in the 'Opinion Daily' of our POP Site." | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (2) Under Secretaries and Political Assistants In May 2008, the HKSAR Government announced the list of newly employed Under Secretaries and Political Assistants. POP has now conducted a survey to gauge people's familiarity with these officials, as a test of their popularity. Herewith the contact information for the survey:
Herewith the result of our latest survey on "people's most familiar Under Secretaries":
# Such changes have gone beyond the sampling errors at the 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. Herewith the result of our latest survey on "people's most familiar Political Assistants":
# Such changes have gone beyond the sampling errors at the 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 percentages of respondents who could name Raymond Cheung and Paul Chan were 0.23% and 0.19% respectively. Hence Cheung ranked the 3th while Chan was placed at 4th rank. The percentages for Zandra Mok and Victor Lo were both 0.14%, and hence they were of same rank. In our naming survey conducted in late-October, respondents could name, unaided, Under Secretaries and Political Assistants whom they knew best. Results showed that only six Under Secretaries were mentioned, they were Gregory So, Julia Leung, Kitty Poon, Yau Shing-mu, Raymond Tam and Matthew Leung. The corresponding percentages of respondents who could name these figures were 4%, 3%, 2% and three obtaining less than 1%. Yet, 85% of the respondents could not recall any names of Under Secretaries. As for Political Assistants, similarly, only six Political Assistants were mentioned, they were Jeremy Young, Katherine Ng, Raymond Cheung, Paul Chan, Zandra Mok and Victor Lo. The corresponding percentages of respondents who could name these figures were 1% and 5 obtaining less than 1%. Yet, 93% of the respondents could not recall any names of Political Assistants. Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, "In our latest survey, 2 out of 8 Under Secretaries and 3 out of 9 Political Assistants receive zero recognition. This means that Hong Kong people are not at all familiar with the team, although the situation is slightly better than that of 3 months ago. More than five months have elapsed since the government announced the appointment of these officials, but almost one-third of them still have zero recognition, which is far from satisfactory. It should be noted, however, that our ranking of recognition is based on respondents' ability to name these officials unaided. This kind of familiarity measurement is not the same as prompted ratings, and the results may not necessarily indicate people's support of these officials. 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. As for the reasons affecting the popularity of these officials, we leave it to our readers to form their own judgment using the detailed records displayed in the 'Opinion Daily' of our POP Site." | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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 11, 2008, Tuesday, between 1pm and 2pm, when the popularity figures of CE Donald Tsang, Secretaries of Departments and Directors of Bureaux under the accountability system 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. POP will release WPO's next round of international polling results on November 11, 2008, next Tuesday, including findings from the Greater China Region. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | Special Announcement | Abstract | (1) Top 5 members of Executive Council | (2) Under Secretaries and Political Assistants | | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
