HKU POP SITE releases survey results on people's most familiar political figuresBack
| Press Release on June 4, 2009 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Special Announcement | Abstract | Latest Figures | Opinion Daily | Commentary | | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Special Announcement At the 18th anniversary of the Public Opinion Programme (POP) of the University of Hong Kong, in order to strengthen POP's anchorage to the world, and to construct a better China, the POP Site is gradually being revamped starting this month. Robert Chung, the Director of POP, also issued an editor's note entitled 「Nine plus Nine」 for public consumption at http://hkupop.pori.hk on June 2, 2009. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Abstract The Public Opinion Programme at the University of Hong Kong interviewed 1,011 Hong Kong people between May 19 and 22 by means of a random telephone survey conducted by real interviewers. The survey finds that Donald Tsang continues to be the most visible political figure in Hong Kong with his recognition rate significantly surpassing that of other "top 10" political figures, leaving aside people's support of him. Compared to 6 months ago, there are only ranking changes in our "top 10" list. There is no dropout or new inclusion. The ranking of Henry Tang increases 4 places, while that of Audrey Eu and Martin Lee drop 4 and 3 places respectively. The change in relative rankings of other figures is just within plus or minus 2 positions. In other words, there is basically very little change in Hong Kong people's familiarity with the most prominent political figures in the past 6 months. 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. 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 68%. 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 68.3% response rate. In the past, many media made this mistake. * The maximum sampling error of all percentages is +/-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 survey 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 Martin Lee 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 2008 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:
Media can state "sampling error of percentages not more than +/-3% at 95% confidence level" when quoting the above figures. The error margin of previous survey can be found at 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 percentages of respondents who could name Leung Kwok-hung and Emily Lau were 33.2% and 33.1% respectively. Hence Leung ranked the 2nd while Lau was placed at 3rd rank. The percentages of respondents who could name Lee Cheuk-yan and Jasper Tsang were 22.0% and 21.9% respectively. Hence Lee ranked the 8th while Tsang was placed at 9th rank. §§ The percentages of respondents who could name Leung Kwok-hung and Wong Yuk-man were 28.8% and 28.6% respectively. Hence Leung ranked the 2nd while Wong was placed at 3rd rank. The percentages of respondents who could name Regina Ip and Henry Tang were 26.0% and 25.8% respectively. Hence Ip ranked the 5th while Tang was placed at 6th rank. The percentages of respondents who could name Lee Cheuk-yan and Audrey Eu were 21.3% and 20.7% respectively. Hence Lee ranked the 8th while Eu was placed at 9th rank. ^ The earliest of the past 10 surveys was conducted in October 11-14, 2004. 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 in the second half of May, respondents could name, unaided, up to 10 political figures whom they knew best. Donald Tsang, Leung Kwok-hung, Wong Yuk-man and Emily Lau were the top four. The corresponding percentages of respondents who could name these figures were 44%, 29%, 29% and 27%. The 5th to 10th ranks fell to Regina Ip, Henry Tang, Jasper Tsang, Lee Cheuk-yan, Audrey Eu and Martin Lee respectively. Their corresponding recognition rates were 26%, 26%, 24%, 21%, 21% and 19%. 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 March 1997. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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, the previous survey was conducted from November 26 to 30, 2008 while this survey was conducted from May 19 to 22, 2009. 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 continues to be the most visible political figure in Hong Kong with his recognition rate significantly surpassing that of other 'top 10' political figures, leaving aside people's support of him. Compared to 6 months ago, there are only ranking changes in our 'top 10' list. There is no dropout or new inclusion. The ranking of Henry Tang increases 4 places, while that of Audrey Eu and Martin Lee drop 4 and 3 places respectively. The change in relative rankings of other figures is just within plus or minus 2 positions. In other words, there is basically very little change in Hong Kong people's familiarity with the most prominent political figures in the past 6 months. 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'."
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| Special Announcement | Abstract | Latest Figures | Opinion Daily | Commentary | | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
