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

The Public Opinion Programme at the University of Hong Kong interviewed 1,060 Hong Kong people between February 4 and 9 by means of a random telephone survey conducted by real interviewers. The survey finds that most of our 12 subjective social indicators have gone up over the past 6 months and the increases in 6 indicators have gone beyond sampling errors. Among them, "efficiency" registers the biggest increase, followed by "corruption-free", "public order", "prosperity", "rule of law" and "freedom". Regarding the rule of law indicators, both "impartiality of the courts" and "fairness of the judicial system" have climbed noticeably, reaching their all time record highs since this survey series began in 1997. Chief Justice Andrew Li Kwok-nang, the figurehead of our judicial system, has also registered a big jump of 7.1 marks in his popularity rating, to 68.1 marks which is record high since this survey started. In terms of relative ranking, "freedom" indicator continues to stay at the top with more than 7.5 marks, to form the top tier. "Public order", "civilization", "corruption-free", "stability" and "prosperity" form the second tier, with ratings above 7.0 marks. "Rule of law" and "efficiency" form the third tier, with ratings between 6.5 and 7.0 marks. "Equality", "social welfare" and"democracy" used to stay at the fourth tier, usually slightly above 6.0 marks. "Democracy", however, has dropped to 5.99 marks in our latest survey, which is the first time since July 2004 that it goes below 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 +/-1.7 marks and the response rate of the survey is 67%.

Points to note:
[1] The address of the "HKU POP SITE" is http://hkupop.pori.hk, journalists can check out the details of the survey there.
[2] The sample size of this survey is 1,060 successful interviews, not 1,060 x 67.3% response rate. In the past, many media made this mistake.
[3] "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 +/-1.7 at 95% confidence level" when quoting the above figures.
[4] When quoting the rating figures of this survey, one decimal place can be used, in order to match the precision level of the figures.
[5] 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 mid-2009. Herewith the contact information for the latest survey:

Regarding the social indicators, results obtained in early February showed that, on a scale of 0-10, Hong Kong's degree of "freedom" scored the highest rating with 7.63 marks. "Public order" and "civilization" followed behind, with respective scores of 7.34 and 7.29 marks. "Corruption-free practices", "stability" and "prosperity" formed the next tier, scoring 7.18, 7.09 and 7.03 marks respectively. Meanwhile, the ratings of "compliance with the rule of law", "efficiency", "equality", "social welfare sufficiency" and "democracy」 were 6.88, 6.88, 6.17, 6.12 and 5.99 marks correspondingly. Last of all, "fairness" scored 5.60 marks.

As for the 2 rule of law sub-indicators, the impartiality of the courts scored 7.40 marks, while the rating of the fairness of the judicial system was 7.05 marks. Meanwhile, the latest popularity rating of Chief Justice Andrew Li Kwok-nang, a representative figure of the judicial system, was 68.1 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 August 11 to 16, 2009 while the latest one was conducted from February 4 to 9, 2010. 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 finding shows that most of our 12 subjective social indicators have gone up over the past 6 months and the increases in 6 indicators have gone beyond sampling errors. Among them, "efficiency" registers the biggest increase, followed by "corruption-free", "public order", "prosperity", "rule of law" and "freedom". Regarding the rule of law indicators, both "impartiality of the courts" and "fairness of the judicial system" have climbed noticeably, reaching their all time record highs since this survey series began in 1997. Chief Justice Andrew Li Kwok-nang, the figurehead of our judicial system, has also registered a big jump of 7.1 marks in his popularity rating, to 68.1 marks which is record high since this survey started. In terms of relative ranking, "freedom" indicator continues to stay at the top with more than 7.5 marks, to form the top tier. "Public order", "civilization", "corruption-free", "stability" and "prosperity" form the second tier, with ratings above 7.0 marks. "Rule of law" and "efficiency" form the third tier, with ratings between 6.5 and 7.0 marks. "Equality", "social welfare" and"democracy" used to stay at the fourth tier, usually slightly above 6.0 marks. "Democracy", however, has dropped to 5.99 marks in our latest survey, which is the first time since July 2004 that it goes below 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.」

• February 23, 2010 (Tuesday) 1pm to 2pm: Top ten political groups
• February 25, 2010 (Thursday) 1pm to 2pm: Budget instant poll