HKU POP SITE releases the latest figures on subjective social and rule of law indicatorsBack

The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong is being commissioned by the School of Public Health of the same university to recruit voluntary families to participate in a study on the proportion of infections of the novel strain of H1N1 swine influenza, through random telephone interviews. The study would facilitate the pandemic preparedness for our government as well as health authorities around the world. Voluntary family members will be invited to have two rounds of small blood samples taking, details of which will be explained during the recruitment exercise. We sincerely plead for people's cooperation. This study is conducted by the School of Public Health in collaboration with Queen Mary Hospital and the Centre for Health Protection of Department of Health. It is funded by the Area of Excellence Scheme of the Hong Kong University Grants Committee and the Research Fund for the Control of Infectious Diseases, Hong Kong. The study has been approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of Hong Kong/ Hospital Authority Hong Kong West Cluster. If people have any questions in relation to the study, please contact the School of Public Health hotline at 8170-0183, or by email to [email protected], or visit the following website: http://web.hku.hk/~kkocuhk/serofluc.htm.

POP interviewed 1,006 Hong Kong people between 11 and 16 August, 2009 by means of a random telephone survey conducted by real interviewers. The survey finds that the readings of our 12 subjective social indicators have not changed much over the past 6 months. Only the "freedom" indicator has dropped beyond sampling error, while "social welfare" indicator has gone up significantly, otherwise all variations are not statistically significant. Regarding the rule of law indicators, both "impartiality of the courts" and "fairness of the judicial system" have climbed noticebly, with the reading of the former reaching its all time record high since this survey series began. However, the overall "rule of law" indicator has not changed much, meainig that it is also affected by other factors. In terms of relative ranking, "freedom" indicator continues to stay at the top with more than 7.5 marks, to form the top tier. "Civilization", "public order" and "stability" form the second tier, with ratings slightly above 7.0 marks. "Corruption-free", "prosperity", "rule of law" and "efficiency" form the third tier, with ratings between 6.5 and 7.0 marks. "Social welfare", "equality" and "democracy" 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 71%.

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 1,006 successful interviews, not 1,006x 70.9% 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 +/-1.4 at 95% confidence level" when quoting the above figures.
* 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.

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 2008 year-end. Herewith the contact information for the latest survey:

Date of survey	Overall sample size	Response rate	Sampling error of ratings*
11-16/8/09	1,006	70.9%	+/-1.4

* Calculated at 95% confidence level using full sample size. "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.

Recent trends of these indicators are summarized as follows:

Date of survey	20-24/8/07	12-14/2/08	11-14/8/08	10-12/2/09	11-16/8/09	Latest change
Sample base	1,010	1,028	1,016	1,011	1,006	--
Overall response rate	65.2%	70.2%	69.8%	67.0%	70.9%	--
Finding	Finding	Finding	Finding	Finding	Finding & error*	--
Degree of freedom	7.61	7.63	7.61	7.67	7.51 +/-0.11	-0.16#
Degree of civilization	7.39#	7.42	7.40	7.17#	7.21 +/-0.11	+0.04
Degree of public order	7.37#	7.44	7.50	7.19#	7.19 +/-0.09	--
Degree of stability	7.18	7.41#	7.29#	6.96#	7.03 +/-0.12	+0.07
Degree of corruption-free practices	7.29	7.30	7.20	6.93#	6.96 +/-0.11	+0.03
Degree of prosperity	7.06	7.28#	7.02#	6.82	6.88 +/-0.11	+0.06
Compliance with the rule of law	7.07	6.69#	6.87#	6.78	6.74 +/-0.12	-0.04
Degree of efficiency	7.08#	7.08	6.86#	6.62#	6.60 +/-0.12	-0.02
Degree of social welfare sufficiency	6.42	6.12#	6.32#	6.13#	6.28 +/-0.12	+0.15#
Degree of equality	6.30	6.34	6.29	6.09#	6.14 +/-0.12	+0.05
Degree of democracy	6.25#	6.25	6.10#	6.11	6.02 +/-0.13	-0.09
Degree of fairness	6.01	5.71#	5.76	5.65	5.64 +/-0.12	-0.01
Impartiality of the courts	7.03	6.82#	7.01#	6.84#	7.10 +/-0.11	+0.26#
Compliance with the rule of law (repeated listing)	7.07	6.69#	6.87#	6.78	6.74 +/-0.12	-0.04
Fairness of the judicial system	6.90	6.64#	6.78#	6.56#	6.73 +/-0.11	+0.17#
Support rating of Andrew Li	63.8#	61.1#	60.2	60.9	61.0 +/-1.4	+0.1

* "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. Media can state that "sampling errors are not more than +/-0.13 at 95% confidence level" when citing the indicators, and that "sampling error is not more than +/-1.4 at 95% confidence level" when citing Andrew Li's rating. The error margin of previous survey can be found at the POP Site.
# 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-August showed that, on a scale of 0-10, Hong Kong's degree of "freedom" scored the highest rating with 7.51 marks. "Civilization" and "public order" followed behind, with respective scores of 7.21 and 7.19 marks. "Stability", "corruption-free practices" and "prosperity" formed the next tier, scoring 7.03, 6.96 and 6.88 marks respectively. Meanwhile, the ratings of "compliance with the rule of law", "efficiency", "social welfare sufficiency", "equality" and "democracy" were 6.74, 6.60, 6.28, 6.14 and 6.02 marks correspondingly. Last of all, "fairness" scored 5.64 marks.

As for the 2 rule of law sub-indicators, the impartiality of the courts scored 7.10 marks, while the rating of the fairness of the judicial system was 6.73 marks. Meanwhile, the latest popularity rating of Chief Justice Andrew Li Kwok-nang, a representative figure of the judicial system, was 61.0 marks, on a scale of 0-100.

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 provide readers with accurate information so that they can 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 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.

For the polling items covered in this press release, the previous survey was conducted from February 10 to 12, 2009 while the latest one was conducted from August 11 to 16, 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.

14/8/09	Hong Kong's second-quarter GDP rises by 3.3% from first quarter after a fall.
6/8/09	Many newspapers comment on the first trial of drug-testing scheme at secondary schools of Tai Po in December.
27/7/09	The murderer who killed 16-year-old compensated dating teenage girl is sentenced to life imprisonment.
17/7/09	Norman Chan Tak-lam becomes the new chief of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.
1/7/09	Tens of thousands take to the streets to call for diversified demands.
25/6/09	Police officers cancel their protest march planned for Sunday.
10/6/09	A 16-year-old girl becomes the city's first non-imported case of human swine flu.
8/6/09	People are injured by acid attack again in Mong Kok.
6/6/09	Many newspapers report on increasing drug abuse among youngsters.
1/6/09	A gang of 3 teenage girls rob a taxi driver at knifepoint.
27/5/09	Hang Seng Index rises up to 17885 points which hits a seven-month high.
26/5/09	Many newspapers report that Hong Kong government announces a $16.8 billion economic relief package.
15/5/09	Hong Kong's first-quarter GDP shrinks 7.8 per cent.
26/4/09	Local government issues a string of precautionary measures.
25/4/09	Flu checks in HK amid fear of flu pandemic.
15/3/09	35 pan-democrats are allowed to enter Macau while another 5 are refused.
25/2/09	John Tsang delivers budget speech with short-term strategies of countering financial crisis and preserving job.
17/2/09	HK's unemployment rate soars to 4.6%.

Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, "Our latest finding shows that the readings of our 12 subjective social indicators have not changed much over the past 6 months. Only the "freedom' indicator has dropped beyond sampling error, while 'social welfare' indicator has gone up significantly, otherwise all variations are not statistically significant. Regarding the rule of law indicators, both 'impartiality of the courts' and 'fairness of the judicial system' have climbed noticebly, with the reading of the former reaching its all time record high since this survey series began. However, the overall 'rule of law' indicator has not changed much, meainig that it is also affected by other factors. In terms of relative ranking, 'freedom' indicator continues to stay at the top with more than 7.5 marks, to form the top tier. 'Civilization', 'public order' and 'stability' form the second tier, with ratings slightly above 7.0 marks. 'Corruption-free', 'prosperity', 'rule of law' and 'efficiency' form the third tier, with ratings between 6.5 and 7.0 marks. 'Social welfare', 'equality' and 'democracy' 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."

• August 25, 2009 (Tuesday) 1pm to 2pm: Popularity of CE and the HKSAR Government