HKU POP SITE releases survey findings on the Executive Councilors, Under Secretaries and Political AssistantsBack
| Press Release on January 20, 2009 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | (1) Top 5 members of Executive Council | (2) Under Secretaries and Political Assistants | | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 in January, by means of random telephone surveys conducted by real interviewers. The surveys find that compared to three months ago, the popularity ratings of people's most familiar non-official Executive Councillors have generally increased. Among them, Lau Kong-wah and Leung Chun-ying's ratings have significantly increased. In terms of relative ranking, Ronald Arculli continues to top the list, Anthony Cheung stays at 2nd, Lau Kong-wah enters the list for the second time and moves two steps up to become the 3rd, Cheng Yiu-tong and Leung Chun-ying both drop one position to become the 4th and 5th. Had Fan Hung-ling not been suspended of duties, he might well have joined the "top 5", support rating unknown. Regarding Under Secretaries and Political Assistants, it was found that 1 out of 8 Under Secretaries and 3 out of 9 Political Assistants receive zero recognition, while no official has a recognition rate up to 2%. This means that people are not at all familiar with the team. More than 8 months have elapsed since the government announced the appointment of these officials, but almost one-quarter of them still have zero recognition, the situation is far from satisfactory. The sampling errors of the ratings registered fall between +/-1.3 and 2.0 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 early-January. In that survey, respondents could name, unaided, up to 5 non-official Executive Councillors whom they knew best. Leung Chun-ying, Lau Kong-wah, Cheng Yiu-tong, Ronald Arculli, Anthony Cheung, Fan Hung-ling, Laura Cha, Bernard Chan, Rafael Hui and Cheung Kin-tung 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. Fan Hung-ling asked for his suspension of duties and was accepted by Chief Executive on 24 October. He has not resumed duty since then and his status remains ambiguous. Hence POP has not included him in the rating survey even though he has obtained many nominations in the first stage. During the second stage rating survey conducted in mid-January, 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 mid-January showed that Ronald Arculli was the most popularly supported non-official Executive Councillor, attaining 55.5 marks. The 2nd rank went to Anthony Cheung with 55.2 marks. The 3rd and 4th ranks went to Lau Kong-wah and Cheng Yiu-tong, with 49.8 and 49.6 marks respectively. Leung Chun-ying occupied the 5th rank, attaining 49.1 marks. The mean score obtained by these top 5 non-official Executive Councillors was 51.9 marks. For this latest survey, Laura Cha obtained a support rating of 49.3 marks, but she was dropped due to her 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 two non-official Executive Councillors have been on the list for four times. Ronald Arculli and Leung Chun-ying achieved an average rating of 58.7 and 51.0 marks, Cheng Yiu-tong has been on the list for three times with average rating of 51.4 marks. Selina Chow, Anthony Cheung, Jasper Tsang and Lau Kong-wah have been on the list for two times and ranked 4th to 7th with 57.1, 54.4, 51.6 and 48.1 marks respectively. Bernard Chan has been on the list once and ranked 8th with 55.5 marks. Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, "Compared to three months ago, the popularity ratings of people's most familiar non-official Executive Councillors have generally increased. Among them, Lau Kong-wah and Leung Chun-ying's ratings have significantly increased. In terms of relative ranking, Ronald Arculli continues to top the list, Anthony Cheung stays at 2nd, Lau Kong-wah enters the list for the second time and moves two steps up to become the 3rd, Cheng Yiu-tong and Leung Chun-ying both drop one position to become the 4th and 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, 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. ^ The percentages of respondents who could name Kitty Poon Kit and Gregory So Kam-leung were 1.31% and 1.29% respectively. Hence Poon ranked the 1st while So was placed at 2nd rank. The percentages of respondents who could name Raymond Tam Chi-yuen and Julia Leung Fung-yee were 0.43% and 0.41% respectively. Hence Tam ranked the 5th while Leung was placed at 6th rank. 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 Paul Chan Chi-yuen, Raymond Cheung Man-to and Katherine Ng Kit-shuen were 0.35%, 0.32% and 0.31% respectively. Hence Chan ranked the 3rd, Cheung ranked 4th and Ng was placed at 5th rank. In our naming survey conducted in early-January, respondents could name, unaided, Under Secretaries and Political Assistants whom they knew best. Results showed that only seven Under Secretaries were mentioned, they were Kitty Poon, Gregory So, Yau Shing-mu, Chen Wei-on, Raymond Tam, Julia Leung and Gabriel Matthew Leung. The corresponding percentages of respondents who could name these figures were 1.3%, 1.3%, 1.1% and four obtaining less than 1%. Yet, 90% of the respondents could not recall any names of Under Secretaries. As for Political Assistants, similarly, only six Political Assistants were mentioned, they were Zandra Mok, Jeremy Young, Paul Chan, Raymond Cheung, Katherine Ng and Victor Lo. The corresponding percentages of respondents who could name these figures were 1% and 5 obtaining less than 1%. Yet, 92% 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, 1 out of 8 Under Secretaries and 3 out of 9 Political Assistants receive zero recognition, while no official has a recognition rate up to 2%. This means that people are not at all familiar with the team. More than 8 months have elapsed since the government announced the appointment of these officials, but almost one-quarter of them still have zero recognition, the situation 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." | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| | Abstract | (1) Top 5 members of Executive Council | (2) Under Secretaries and Political Assistants | | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
