HKU POP SITE releases findings on people's expectation of CE's Policy AddressBack
| Press Release on October 11, 2010 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | Latest Figures | Commentary | Future Releases (Tentative) | | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Abstract
The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong conducted a double stage survey on people's expectation of CE's Policy Address in second half of September and early October, by means of random telephone surveys conducted by real interviewers. The survey finds that whether prompted or not, people consider "housing" problem to be the most pressing policy area to be handled in CE's Policy Address. In terms of absolute percentage of importance, the general problem of "economic development" comes second, followed by "labour and employment", "social welfare" and "education". The figures are all over 80%. Compared to this time last year, for the four items which appear on the top 5 list for two consecutive years, those who consider social welfare to be "very important" has surged by 10 percentage points, while that of labour and employment, economic development and education has dropped significantly by 17, 10 and 7 percentage points respectively. The surge in people's concern for housing problems should be directly related to the government's recent "Public Consultation on Subsidising Home Ownership". The maximum sampling error of the survey is between +/-2 and +/-3 percentage points at 95% confidence level, response rate of the first stage and second stage survey being 66% and 60% respectively.
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 the first stage survey is 1,010 successful interviews, not 1,010 x 66.2% response rate, while the sample size of the second stage survey is another 1,014, not 1,014 x 60.0% response rate. In the past, many media made this mistake. [3] The maximum sampling error of all percentages is between +/-2 and +/-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". [4] When quoting figures of this survey, journalists should refrain from reporting the decimal places, because sampling errors do not entail this kind of precision. [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. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Latest Figures
POP today releases on schedule via the POP SITE the latest findings on people's expectation of the sixth Policy Address of CE Donald Tsang. 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-2010 for both the first and second stage survey. Herewith the contact information for the latest survey:
According to our first stage survey conducted in second half of September, when asked to name unaided one issue that CE Donald Tsang should focus on in his sixth Policy Address to be announced this Wednesday, 25% of the respondents each wished he would take "housing" and "economic development" as his first priority, a respective of 18%, 13%, 4% and 3% opted for "social welfare", "labour and employment", "education" and "medical policy". Besides, "political development" and "human rights and freedom" took up 2% and 1% respectively, while 7% of the respondents failed to give a specific answer. Please refer to the "HKU POP SITE" for detailed figures. In order to further study people's expectations, another survey was conducted in early October whereby respondents were asked to evaluate each of the 5 top priority items individually, on a 5-point scale, how important it is for each item to be tackled in the Policy Address. Results compared to those of last 2 years are summarized below:
[8] Percentages in this column may not be equal to the sum of percentages shown in the columns of "very" and "quite important" due to the round-off problem. The mean value is calculated by quantifying all individual responses into 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 marks according to their degree of importance level, where 1 is the lowest and 5 the highest, and then calculate the sample mean. [9] 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. [10] In one decimal place, a respective of 85.4%, 85.3% and 84.9% perceived the issue of economic development, labour and employment, and social welfare as "important". When asked to evaluate each item individually, housing issue topped the list, as 88% of the respondents said CE Donald Tsang needed to tackle this issue in the coming Policy Address. Economic development, labour and employment, social welfare and education issues followed, as 85%, 85%, 85% and 82% thought they needed to be tackled in the Policy Address correspondingly. The mean score of housing issue is 4.6, meaning close to "very important", while the respective mean scores of the other four issues are 4.4, 4.4, 4.4 and 4.3, meaning close to "quite important" in general. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Commentary
Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, explained, "In order to measure public opinion more accurately, we began to use a two-stage design to study people's expectation of the upcoming Policy Address five years ago. We wanted to study both the absolute and relative importance of different policy items. In our latest survey, whether prompted or not, people consider 'housing' problem to be the most pressing policy area to be handled in CE's Policy Address. In terms of absolute percentage of importance, the general problem of 'economic development' comes second, followed by 'labour and employment', 'social welfare' and 'education'. The figures are all over 80%. Compared to this time last year, for the four items which appear on the top 5 list for two consecutive years, those who consider social welfare to be 'very important' has surged by 10 percentage points, while that of labour and employment, economic development and education has dropped significantly by 17, 10 and 7 percentage points respectively. The surge in people's concern for housing problems should be directly related to the government's recent 'Public Consultation on Subsidising Home Ownership'."
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Future Releases (Tentative)
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | Latest Figures | Commentary | Future Releases (Tentative) | |
