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POP Panel

 

“POP Panel” is a new research instrument organized by POP, after making reference to the design of some panel studies in other countries. It was started in the second half of 2013 and officially launched in 2014 as a new trend of social research. POP will randomly recruit household members into POP Panel, then sample different subjects for different research projects. All qualified members within a household will have the chance to be invited to enroll in particular research projects. In general, the raw data of each survey will be weighted in accordance with the latest population statistics obtained from the Census and Statistics Department in order to increase the representativeness of figures.

 

As for opinion collection, POP will contact panel members through multiple channels so that citizens’ opinion on different topic can be efficiently and accurately collected to promote social development. Apart from traditional telephone interview, it also includes new electronic media, such as online questionnaire, mobile application, text messages, email, as well as facsimile, mail questionnaire and forum, etc.

 

Panel members will receive invitations to join various research activities from POP irregularly within 1 year of enrollment. Subject to availability of resources, incentives would be given to the respondents upon completing of survey each time as a token of appreciation.

 

Public Survey on TVB Jade Solid Gold Music Awards 2013

 

“Public Survey on TVB Jade Solid Gold Music Awards 2013” is the first research project of POP Panel. The target population of this survey was Hong Kong citizens aged 12 or above who have listened to local pop songs in the past 12 months. It was conducted by self-administered questionnaire and telephone interview. POP invited citizens to enroll as POP Panel members by telephone, with panel members’ consent, POP then randomly selected one household member of each qualified household to participate in this survey. Invitation letter, ballot, research background and voting rules were sent to the invited panel members by post or email. This survey mainly make use of online ballots, panel members can fill in the online ballot by logging in the survey website with unique password. Panel members can also choose to fill in the paper ballot, and then submit it to POP by mail, email or fax. A serial number was printed on the questionnaire for chasing and follow-up actions, if needed. Apart from online ballot and paper ballot, panel members can also participate in this survey by telephone interview, which was conducted by interviewers under close supervision. Interviewers recorded down panel members’ answers by phone and submitted the ballot for them. The same panel member can vote repeatedly or change his/her choices within the survey period, POP would only take the last record as the valid choice of songs.

 

The survey was conducted from December 31, 2013 to January 13, 2014[1]. A total of 1,094 ballots were received, out of the 1,344 invitation letters and ballots distributed (see Table 1). Amongst them, 36 were void as the voters’ identity could not be verified. The final number of valid ballots was 1,058 (see Table 2). The response rate of this survey is 78.7%, calculated as the number of valid votes divided by the number of ballots distributed. For the overall sample, the sampling error of percentages is less than plus/minus 3.0 percentage points at 95% confidence level.

 

Table 1 Invitations and reminders information

 

 

Invitation letters and ballots for
target panel members

Notification letters for
other family members of the target panel members

Reminders for
target panel members[2]

Email

Postal mail

Email

Email

Telephone

30/12/13

714

--

--

--

--

31/12/13

--

321

479

--

--

2/1/14

--

--

--

479

--

3/1/14

34

--

--

--

--

6/1/14

64

42

3

--

248

7/1/14

46

7

1

--

245

8/1/14

30

11

--

--

292

9/1/14

27

14

1

273

203

10/1/14

34

--

--

--

161

Total

949

395

483

752

1,149

 

Table 2 Submission channels of valid ballots

 

 

Online ballot

Telephone interview

Paper ballot (including postal mail, email and fax)

30/12/13

12

--

--

31/12/13

151

--

--

1/1/14

45

--

--

2/1/14

67

--

1

3/1/14

48

--

2

4/1/14

20

--

2

5/1/14

17

--

2

6/1/14

63

--

17

7/1/14

72

74

8

8/1/14

51

103

9

9/1/14

70

72

5

10/1/14

33

70

2

11/1/14

18

--

--

12/1/14

10

--

--

13/1/14

5

--

9

Total

682

319

57

 

To increase the representativeness of the samples, the raw data collected in this survey have been weighted. Since there is no information on the Hong Kong population aged 12 or above who have listened to local pop songs in the past 12 months published by the government, all the figures have been weighted according to the gender-age distribution of the 6,278 panel members from 2,159 POP Panel household reached, based on the provisional figures obtained from the Census and Statistics Department regarding the gender-age distribution of the Hong Kong population aged 12 or above in mid-2013. All figures in this report are based on the weighted sample.

 

[1] The original survey period was from December 31, 2013 to January 15, 2014. The survey closed earlier on January 13, 2014 due to overwhelming responses.
[2] POP would send out one or more reminders to individual panel members if they have not submitted their ballot.