HKU POP SITE releases latest trust and confidence 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 1,000 Hong Kong people between 25 and 30 August by means of a random telephone survey conducted by real interviewers. Our survey finds that after a big jump two months ago, people's trust in the local government has dropped back to a level slightly higher than that registered four months ago. Its net trust now stands at positive 32 percentage points. Compared to two months ago, people's trust in the central government has remained stable, while their distrust in the Taiwan government has gone up by 6 percentage points. Their net trust now stand at positive 32 and negative 18 percentage points respectively. As for the confidence indicators, changes in people's confidence in the future of Hong Kong and China are all within sampling errors, while people's non-confidence in 'one country, two systems' has gone up by 4 percentage points. All positive figures have remained high, and people's net confidence in the future of Hong Kong, China and 'one country, two systems' now stand at positive 47, 80 and 46 percentage points respectively. The sampling error of all percentages is between +/-2 to 3 percentage points at 95% confidence level, while the response rate of the survey is 65%.

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 1,000 successful interviews, not 1,000 x 64.9% response rate. In the past, many media made this mistake.
* The maximum sampling error of all percentages is below +/-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.

POP today releases on schedule via the POP Site the latest findings on people's trust in the HKSAR, Beijing Central and Taiwan Governments, their confidence in Hong Kong's future, China's future and "one country, two systems". As a general practice, all 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:

Recent popularity figures of SAR, Central and Taiwan Governments, and people's confidence in the future are summarized below:

Survey conducted in second half of August revealed that 46% of the respondents trusted the HKSAR Government, 48% trusted the Beijing Central Government, and 17% trusted the Taiwan Government. On the other hand, 71% of the respondents had confidence in Hong Kong's future and 88% had confidence in China's future, while 71% of the respondents were confident in "one country, two systems".

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 June 16 to 21, 2009 while this survey was conducted from August 25 to 30, 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.

Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, "Our latest survey shows that after a big jump two months ago, people's trust in the local government has dropped back to a level slightly higher than that registered four months ago. Its net trust now stands at positive 32 percentage points. Compared to two months ago, people's trust in the central government has remained stable, while their distrust in the Taiwan government has gone up by 6 percentage points. Their net trust now stand at positive 32 and negative 18 percentage points respectively. As for the confidence indicators, changes in people's confidence in the future of Hong Kong and China are all within sampling errors, while people's non-confidence in 'one country, two systems' has gone up by 4 percentage points. All positive figures have remained high, and people's net confidence in the future of Hong Kong, China and 'one country, two systems' now stand at positive 47, 80 and 46 percentage points respectively. As for the reasons affecting the ups and downs of these figures, readers are welcome to make their own judgment using the detailed records displayed in our 'Opinion Daily'."

• September 8, 2009 (Tuesday) 1pm to 2pm: Popularity of CE and Principal Officials