HKU POP SITE releases the latest figures on subjective social and rule of law indicatorsBack
| Press Release on February 17, 2009 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Abstract The Public Opinion Programme at the University of Hong Kong interviewed 1,011 Hong Kong people between 10 and 12 February, 2009 by means of a random telephone survey conducted by real interviewers. The survey finds that almost all of our 12 subjective social indicators have gone down over the past 6 months, many of them even reverted to the level registered in or before July 2005. Brushing aside the 4 indicators with changes within sampling errors, "stability' registered the biggest drop, followed by "rule of law", "corruption-free", "efficiency", "civilization", "prosperity", "equality" and "social welfare". However, it should be noted that although the latest rise in the "freedom" indicator is not particularly significant, it has nonetheless reached its record high since this survey started after the handover. In terms of relative ranking, "freedom" indicator continues to stay at the top with more than 7.5marks, to form the top tier. 'Public order" and 'civilization" form the second tier, with ratings slightly above 7.0 marks. "Stability", "corruption-free", "prosperity", "rule of law" and "efficiency" form the third tier, with ratings between 6.5 and 7.0 marks. "Social welfare", "democracy" and "equality" form the fourth tier, with just above 6.0 marks. "Fairness" continues to stay at the bottom with just above 5.5 marks, forming the fifth and bottom tier. The sampling error of rating figures is below +/-1.4 marks and 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 1,011 successful interviews, not 1,011 x 67.0% response rate. In the past, many media made this mistake. * At 95% confidence level, the maximum sampling error of rating figures is below +/-1.4 marks. "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 "each sampling error is not more than +/-1.4 at 95% confidence level". * When quoting the rating figures of this survey, one decimal place can be used, 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 the POP Site the latest figures on subjective social and rule of law 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 mid-2008. Herewith the contact information for the latest survey:
The survey findings are shown as follows:
# 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. Regarding the social indicators, results obtained in mid-February showed that, on a scale of 0-10, Hong Kong's degree of "freedom" scored the highest rating with 7.67 marks. "Public order" and "civilization" followed behind, with respective scores of 7.19 and 7.17 marks. "Stability", "corruption-free practices" and "prosperity" formed the next tier, scoring 6.96, 6.93 and 6.82 marks respectively. Meanwhile, the ratings of "compliance with the rule of law", "efficiency", "social welfare sufficiency", "democracy" and "equality" were 6.78, 6.62, 6.13, 6.11 and 6.09 marks correspondingly. Last of all, "fairness" scored 5.65 marks. As for the 2 rule of law sub-indicators, the impartiality of the courts scored 6.84 marks, while the rating of the fairness of the judicial system was 6.56 marks. Meanwhile, the latest popularity rating of Chief Justice Andrew Li Kwok-nang, a representative figure of the judicial system, was 60.9 marks, on a scale of 0-100. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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, in order to let readers judge by themselves the reasons for the ups and downs of different opinion figures. In July 2007, POP collaborated with Wisers Information Limited whereby Wisers supplies to POP each day starting from July 24, a record of significant events of that day, according to the research method designed by POP. These daily entries would be uploaded to "Opinion Daily" as soon as they are verified by POP. For the polling items covered in this press release, using the previous survey as a reference point for comparison, our "Opinion Daily" for this release starts on August 15, 2008, because the previous survey was conducted from August 11 to 14, 2008 while this survey was conducted from February 10 to 12, 2009. During this period, 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, "Our latest finding shows that almost all of our 12 subjective social indicators have gone down over the past 6 months, many of them even reverted to the level registered in or before July 2005. Brushing aside the 4 indicators with changes within sampling errors, 'stability' registered the biggest drop, followed by 'rule of law, 'corruption-free', 'efficiency', 'civilization', 'prosperity', 'equality' and 'social welfare'. However, it should be noted that although the latest rise in the 'freedom' indicator is not particularly significant, it has nonetheless reached its record high since this survey started after the handover. In terms of relative ranking, 'freedom' indicator continues to stay at the top with more than 7.5marks, to form the top tier. 'Public order' and 'civilization' form the second tier, with ratings slightly above 7.0 marks. 'Stability', 'corruption-free', 'prosperity', 'rule of law' and 'efficiency' form the third tier, with ratings between 6.5 and 7.0 marks. 'Social welfare', 'democracy' and 'equality' form the fourth tier, with just above 6.0 marks. 'Fairness' continues to stay at the bottom with just above 5.5 marks, forming the fifth and bottom tier. We leave it for our readers to figure out the reasons for the ups and downs of these indicators using detailed record shown in our 'Opinion Daily' feature page." | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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