HKU POP SITE releases figures of people's satisfaction with Legco members in general, the Hong Kong Police Force and the PLA Hong Kong GarrisonBack

The 「POP Site」 at http://hkupop.pori.hk hosted by the Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong is now linked with social networking websites Facebook and Twitter, plus a new RSS function, in order to help readers follow its content update. POP has also established a Facebook website at http://www.facebook.com/hkupop/ in early August, which has been running smoothly since then.

POP interviewed 1,004 Hong Kong people between 14 and 17 September by means of a random telephone survey conducted by real interviewers. The survey finds that compared to 3 months ago, people's satisafaction with the overall performance of Legco members has remained stable, with a net popularity of negative 13 percentage points. As for the two disciplinary forces, people's satisfaction with the Hong Kong Police Force has dropped back to that of December 2008, after moving upward since the beginning of this year. The net popularity of the Police Force has decreased from positive 64 to positive 50 percentage points, probably due to its inappropriate handling of illegal car racing, and the court ruling of sexual assaults involving a police officer. Meanwhile, people's satisfaction with the PLA Hong Kong Garrison has basically remained unchanged, while its dissatisfaction rate continues to remain near zero. Its net popularity now stands at positive 57 percentage points. As for the reasons affecting the ups and downs of various figures, we leave it to our readers to form their own judgment using detailed records displayed in our "Opinion Daily". It should be noted, however, that people's satisfaction with Legco members in general includes those returned by geographical as well as functional constituencies. It is not a direct measurement of individual Legco members' performance. The sampling error of the survey is between +/-1 and 3 percentage points at 95% confidence level, response rate being 65%.

POP today releases on schedule via the "POP SITE" the latest figures of people's satisfaction with the performance of Legislative Council members in general, the People's Liberation Army Hong Kong Garrison (PLA) and the Hong Kong Police Force (HKPF). 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 figures are summarized as follows:

Results of survey conducted in mid-September revealed that 21% of the respondents were satisfied with the overall performance of the Legco members, and 34% were dissatisfied. As for the performance of the HKPF, 63% were satisfied while 13% were dissatisfied. Besides, 59% were satisfied with the performance of the PLA stationed in Hong Kong, whereas only 2% were dissatisfied.

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 September 14 to 17, 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 survey shows that compared to 3 months ago, people's satisafaction with the overall performance of Legco members has remained stable, with a net popularity of negative 13 percentage points. (Note: The net popularity of the SAR Government for the same period is positive 2 percentage points, as published last week.) As for the two disciplinary forces, people's satisfaction with the Hong Kong Police Force has dropped back to that of December 2008, after moving upward since the beginning of this year. The net popularity of the Police Force has decreased from positive 64 to positive 50 percentage points, probably due to its inappropriate handling of illegal car racing, and the court ruling of sexual assaults involving a police officer. Meanwhile, people's satisfaction with the PLA Hong Kong Garrison has basically remained unchanged, while its dissatisfaction rate continues to remain near zero. Its net popularity now stands at positive 57 percentage points. As for the reasons affecting the ups and downs of various figures, we leave it to our readers to form their own judgment using detailed records displayed in our "Opinion Daily". It should be noted, however, that people's satisfaction with Legco members in general includes those returned by geographical as well as functional constituencies. It is not a direct measurement of individual Legco members' performance.」

• October 6, 2009 (Tuesday) 1pm to 2pm: Rating of political figures in Mainland China and Taiwan