HKU POP releases the latest social indicatorsBack

The “Super DC Election Guessing Game” hosted by the “PopCon” e-platform (http://popcon.hk) of Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong has already been launched, users can now make guesses on the result of the Super DC election due to take place on September 9, until 00:00AM on the election day. The latest situation is that list 801 of Albert Ho leads list 807 of Chan Yuen Han, list 804 of Lau Kong Wah, list 802 of James To, list 805 of Frederick Fung, list 806 of Starry Lee, and list 803 of Kamela Peck, with guestimates of 23%, 19%, 15%, 14%, 11%, 9% and 8% of vote shares respectively.   

POP interviewed 1,040 Hong Kong people between August 7 and 15 by means of a random telephone survey conducted by real interviewers. The survey finds that compared to 6 months ago, the ratings of 4 out of 5 core social indicators (namely, freedom, the rule of law, stability, prosperity and democracy) have gone up. The rating of “rule of law” has even gone up to a record high since the survey started in 1997, which is encouraging. However, the rating of “democracy” has gone down slightly and remains at the bottom. As for the 7 non-core social indicators, 5 have gone up, 1 remains unchanged, but “corruption-free” has dropped to a 10-year low. As for the 10 freedom sub-indicators, our survey shows that with the exception of “freedom of press” and “freedom to strike”, all sub-indicators have ratings above 7 marks, meaning that people generally consider Hong Kong to be a free society. However, that of the freedom to “engage in artistic and literary creation” has dropped to a record low since 1998, which warrants attention. Because freedom and the rule of law are both the core values and the cutting edges of Hong Kong society, they need to be constantly monitored and reflected on. The sampling error of rating figure of various indicators is below +/-0.21 marks while that of Geoffrey Ma is below +/-2.1 marks. The response rate of the survey is 64%.

POP today releases on schedule via the "POP SITE" the latest social indicators, include 5 core indicators, 7 non-core indicators, 10 freedom sub-indicators, 2 rule of law sub-indicators, and the rating of Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma Tao-li. 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 2011 year-end. Herewith the contact information for the latest survey:

[6] Errors are calculated at 95% confidence level using full sample size. “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.

Herewith the latest figures of the 5 core social indicators:

[7] All error figures in the table are calculated 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. Media can state "sampling error of various ratings not more than +/-0.19 at 95% confidence level" when quoting the above figures.
[8] 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.
[9] Starting from February 2011, these questions only use sub-samples of the tracking surveys concerned. The sub-sample sizes of this survey range from 540 to 565, and the increased sampling errors have already been reflected in the figures tabulated.

Herewith the latest figures of the 7 non-core social indicators:

[10] All error figures in the table are calculated 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. Media can state "sampling error of various ratings not more than +/-0.18 at 95% confidence level" when quoting the above figures.
[11] 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.
[12] Starting from August 2010, these questions only use sub-samples of the tracking surveys concerned. The sub-sample sizes of this survey range from 512 to 569, and the increased sampling errors have already been reflected in the figures tabulated.

Herewith the latest figures of the 10 freedom sub-indicators:

[13] All error figures in the table are calculated 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. Media can state "sampling error of various ratings not more than +/-0.21 at 95% confidence level" when quoting the above figures.
[14] 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.
[15] Starting from August 2010, all questions of sub-indicators only use sub-samples of the tracking surveys concerned. The sub-sample sizes of this survey range from 510 to 561, and the increased sampling errors have already been reflected in the figures tabulated.
[16] In three decimal places, the rating of Freedom to engage in artistic and literary creation is 7.462 and that of Freedom of association is 7.459.
[17] In three decimal places, the rating of Freedom of publication is 7.312 and that of Freedom of procession and demonstration is 7.306. 

Herewith the latest figures of the 2 rule of law sub-indicators and the rating of the Chief Justice:

[18] All error figures in the table are calculated 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. Media can state "sampling error of various ratings not more than +/-0.17 at 95% confidence level" when quoting the above figures, and that "sampling error is not more than +/-2.1 at 95% confidence level" when citing Geoffrey Ma's rating.
[19] 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.
[20] Starting from August 2010, all questions of sub-indicators only use sub-samples of the tracking surveys concerned. The sub-sample sizes of this survey range from 549 to 571, and the increased sampling errors have already been reflected in the figures tabulated.
[21] Geoffrey Ma has become the Chief Justice of the Court of Final Appeal since September 1, 2010, and the popularity rating of Ma was asked in this survey, while that of Andrew Li was asked in August 2010 and before.

Regarding the core social indicators, latest results showed that, on a scale of 0-10, Hong Kong's degree of "freedom" scored the highest rating with 7.43 marks, followed by "compliance with the rule of law" with 7.26 marks, and then "stability", "prosperity" and "democracy", with 7.22, 7.12 and 6.38 marks respectively.

As for the non-core social indicators, "public order" has the highest score of 7.69 marks, followed by "civilization", "efficiency", "corruption-free practices", “social welfare sufficiency", "equality" and "fairness", with scores of 7.26, 6.78, 6.64, 6.37, 6.22 and 5.95 marks correspondingly.

As for the freedom sub-indicators, the freedom of "religious belief" scored the highest rating with 8.77 marks. Freedom of "entering or leaving Hong Kong" came second with 8.57 marks. Freedoms of "academic research", "artistic and literary creation","association","speech","publication" and "procession and demonstration" formed the next tier, with respective scores of 7.72, 7.46, 7.46, 7.41, 7.31 and 7.31 marks. Finally, the freedoms to "press" and "strike" attained 6.98 and 6.71 marks.

Finally, for the two rule of law sub-indicators, the impartiality of the courts scored 7.23 marks, while the rating of the fairness of the judicial system was 7.04 marks. Meanwhile, the latest popularity rating of Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma Tao-li, a representative figure of the judicial system, was 63.7 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 February 13 to 16, 2012 while the latest one was conducted from August 7 to 15, 2012. 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 compared to 6 months ago, the ratings of 4 out of 5 core social indicators (namely, freedom, the rule of law, stability, prosperity and democracy) have gone up. The rating of ‘rule of law’ has even gone up to a record high since the survey started in 1997, which is encouraging. However, the rating of ‘democracy’ has gone down slightly and remains at the bottom. As for the 7 non-core social indicators, 5 have gone up, 1 remains unchanged, but ‘corruption-free’ has dropped to a 10-year low. As for the 10 freedom sub-indicators, our survey shows that with the exception of ‘freedom of press’ and ‘freedom to strike’, all sub-indicators have ratings above 7 marks, meaning that people generally consider Hong Kong to be a free society. However, that of the freedom to ‘engage in artistic and literary creation’ has dropped to a record low since 1998, which warrants attention. Because freedom and the rule of law are both the core values and the cutting edges of Hong Kong society, they need to be constantly monitored and reflected on. As for the reasons affecting the ups and downs of various indicators, we leave it for our readers to make their own judgement after reading detailed records shown in our ‘Opinion Daily’ feature page.”

• August 23, 2012 (Thursday) 1pm to 2pm: Results of Legislative Council election survey

• August 28, 2012 (Tuesday) 1pm to 2pm: Popularity of CE and SAR Government and latest PSI figures