HKU POP SITE releases the latest findings of people's ethnic identity Back
| Press Release on December 15, 2009 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | Latest Figures | Opinion Daily | Commentary | Future Release (Tentative) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Abstract The Public Opinion Programme at the University of Hong Kong interviewed 1,007 Hong Kong people in December 8 – 11, 2009 by means of a random telephone survey conducted by real interviewers. The survey finds that probably due to Hong Kong's hosting the East Asian Games, when people have to choose one among the four identity labels 「Hong Kong citizens」, 「Chinese Hong Kong citizens」, 「Chinese citizens」 and 「Hong Kong Chinese citizens」, almost 40% choose 「Hong Kong citizens」, a surge of 13 percentage points in six months, to reach record high since April 2000. The lever effect is that people choosing 「Chinese citizens」 drop 5 percentage points to below 25%, which is record low since September 2000. However, Director of POP Robert Chung explains, the drawback of this test is the artificial confrontation of 「Hong Kong citizenship」 with 「Chinese citizenship」, which may be meaningful in academic studies but not so in everyday life. For this reason, POP has long introduced separate ratings of individual identities, in parallel with categorical identity selections. The superiority of this design becomes vivid in our latest survey. Figures show that compared to six months ago, Hong Kong people's strength of identification as 「Hong Kong citizens」, 「Chinese citizens」, 「members of the Chinese race」 and 「Asians」 have all gone up, while that of 「citizens of PRC」 and 「global citizens」 have gone down. Among them, 「Hong Kong citizens」 registers the biggest increase, compressing the percentage of 「Chinese citizens」 in forced-choice measurements. It should be noted that although the strength of 「Hong Kong citizens」 is highest among Hong Kong people, 「Chinese citizens」 has the highest importance score. Combining the two factors, people feel most strongly being 「Hong Kong citizens」, followed by 「Chinese citizens」, 「members of the Chinese race」, 「Asians」, 「citizens of PRC」 and then 「global citizens」. The purpose of constantly expanding the scope of our identity studies is to enhance our discussion of ethnic identity beyond the simple dichotomy of 「Hong Kong citizens」 versus 「Chinese citizens」. The maximum sampling error of all percentages is between +/-2 and +/-3 percentage points at 95% confidence level, while sampling error of rating figures needs another calculation. The response rate of the survey is 69%. Points to note:
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| Latest Figures POP today releases on schedule via the POP Site the latest findings of people's opinions towards ethnic identity. 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 mid-2009. Herewith the contact information for the latest survey:
Recent figures on Hong Kong people's sense of ethnic identity are summarized as follows:
** This means the percentage of 「Chinese Hong Kong Citizen」 plus 「Hong Kong Chinese Citizen」. # 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. When asked to make a choice among 4 given identities, namely, "Hong Kong citizens", "Chinese Hong Kong citizens", "Chinese citizens" and "Hong Kong Chinese citizens", 38% of the respondents identified themselves as "Hong Kong citizens", 24% as "Chinese citizens", 24% as "Chinese Hong Kong citizens", while 13% identified themselves as "Hong Kong Chinese citizens". In other words, 61% of the respondents identified themselves as "Hong Kong People" in the broader sense (i.e. either as "Hong Kong citizens" or "Chinese Hong Kong citizens"), whereas 37% identified themselves as "Chinese People" in the broader sense (i.e. either as "Chinese citizens" or "Hong Kong Chinese citizens"), 37% chose a mixed identity of 「Hong Kong citizens plus Chinese citizens」 (i.e. either as "Chinese Hong Kong citizens" or "Hong Kong Chinese citizens"). Because the concepts of "Hong Kong citizens", "Chinese Hong Kong citizens", "Chinese citizens" and "Hong Kong Chinese citizens" may overlap with each other, and making a one-in-four choice may not reflect the actual strengths of one's ethnic identities, POP has right from the beginning conducted parallel tests on the strengths of people's separate identities as "Hong Kong citizens" and "Chinese citizens" using a scale of 0-10. In June 2007, POP expanded its study to include four new identities for strength rating, namely, 「citizens of PRC」, 「members of the Chinese race」, 「Asians」 and 「global citizens」. In December 2008, the study was further expanded by including separate importance ratings for different identities, and the compilation of a separate index for each identity using geometric means. Herewith the latest results:
** Since December 2008, the sub-sample size of these questions is controlled at slightly over 500 cases. # 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. ^ New items since December 2008. 「Identity index」 is calculated for each identity of a respondent by taking the geometric mean of the strength and importance ratings of a certain identity, multiply by 10. If either the strength or importance rating of a respondent is missing, it is substituted by the sample mean of that identity. Latest findings showed that the identity ratings for 「Hong Kong citizens」, 「Asians」, 「Chinese citizens」 and 「members of the Chinese race」 were 8.14, 7.80, 7.79 and 7.78 marks respectively. Using the same rating method, the strength of people's identity as 「citizens of PRC」 and 「global citizens」 were 6.92 and 6.73 marks respectively. As for the importance ratings, 「Chinese citizens」, 「Hong Kong citizens」 and 「members of the Chinese race」 scored 7.59, 7.44 and 7.40 marks respectively, while those for 「Asians」, 「citizens of PRC」 and 「global citizens」 were 7.03, 6.71 and 6.39 marks respectively. Taking the geometric mean of the strength and importance ratings of each respondent and then multiply it by 10, we have an "identity index" for the respondent for a certain identity between 0 to 100, with 0 meaning no feeling, 100 meaning extremely strong feeling, and 50 meaning half and half. Using these identity indices, the rank order of Hong Kong people's six identities were 「Hong Kong citizens」, 「Chinese citizens」, 「members of the Chinese race」, 「Asians」, 「citizens of PRC」 and 「global citizens」. Their scores were 76.7, 76.1 , 75.2 , 72.9, 66.9 and 64.5 marks respectively.
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| 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 June 8 to 13, 2009 while this survey was conducted from December 8 to 11, 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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Robert Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, 「Probably due to Hong Kong's hosting the East Asian Games, when people have to choose one among the four identity labels "Hong Kong citizens", "Chinese Hong Kong citizens", "Chinese citizens" and "Hong Kong Chinese citizens", almost 40% choose "Hong Kong citizens", a surge of 13 percentage points in six months, to reach record high since April 2000. The lever effect is that people choosing "Chinese citizens" drop 5 percentage points to below 25%, which is record low since September 2000. The drawback of this test, however, is the artificial confrontation of "Hong Kong citizenship" with "Chinese citizenship", which may be meaningful in academic studies but not so in everyday life. For this reason, POP has long introduced separate ratings of individual identities, in parallel with categorical identity selections. The superiority of this design becomes vivid in our latest survey. Figures show that compared to six months ago, Hong Kong people's strength of identification as "Hong Kong citizens", "Chinese citizens", "members of the Chinese race" and "Asians" have all gone up, while that of "citizens of PRC" and "global citizens" have gone down. Among them, "Hong Kong citizens" registers the biggest increase, compressing the percentage of "Chinese citizens" in forced-choice measurements. It should be noted that although the strength of "Hong Kong citizens" is highest among Hong Kong people, "Chinese citizens" has the highest importance score. Combining the two factors, people feel most strongly being "Hong Kong citizens", followed by "Chinese citizens", "members of the Chinese race", "Asians", "citizens of PRC" and then "global citizens". The purpose of constantly expanding the scope of our identity studies is to enhance our discussion of ethnic identity beyond the simple dichotomy of "Hong Kong citizens" versus "Chinese citizens". As for the ups and downs of different figures, we will leave it to our readers to form their own judgment using the detailed records displayed in our "Opinion Daily".」
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Future Release (Tentative)
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| Abstract | Latest Figures | Opinion Daily | Commentary | Future Release (Tentative) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
