Survey on Carrie Lam’s First Year Performance as the Chief Executive sponsored by Apple DailyBack

Research Background

In June 2018, Apple Daily commissioned the Public Opinion Programme (POP) of The University of Hong Kong to conduct this survey from 20 to 22 June 2018 with 504 Cantonese-speaking citizens of Hong Kong of age 18 or above. The survey aimed to gauge how Hong Kong people appraise the first year’s performance of CE Carrie Lam.

The research instrument used in this study was designed entirely by the POP Team after consulting Apple Daily. Fieldwork operations and data analysis were also conducted independently by the POP Team, without interference from any outside parties. In other words, although POP has sought opinion from Apple Daily regarding the questionnaire design, POP was given full autonomy to design and conduct the survey, and POP would take full responsibility for all the findings reported herewith.

Research Design

Telephone interviews were conducted by telephone interviewers under close supervision. All data were collected by interviewers using a Web-based Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (Web-CATI) system invented in-house by the research team, which allowed real-time data capture and consolidation. To ensure data quality, on top of on-site supervision and random checking, voice recording, screen capturing and camera surveillance were used to monitor the interviewers’ performance.

Telephone numbers were randomly generated using known prefixes assigned to telecommunication services providers under the Numbering Plan provided by the Office of the Communications Authority (OFCA). Invalid numbers were then eliminated according to computer and manual dialing records to produce the final sample.

The target population of this survey was Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong citizens of age 18 or above. For landline sample, when telephone contact was successfully established with a target household, one eligible subject was interviewed. If more than one eligible subject had been available, selection was made using the “next birthday rule” which selected the person who had his/her birthday next. The survey was conducted during the period of 20 to 22 June, 2018. A total of 504 eligible subjects were successfully interviewed, including 329 landline and 175 mobile samples. The effective response rate of this survey was 61.3%, and the standard sampling error for percentages based on this sample was less than 2.2 percentage points. In other words, the sampling error for all percentages using the total sample was less than plus/minus 4.5 percentage points at 95% confidence level.

To ensure representativeness of the findings, the raw data have been rim-weighted according to figures collected in the 2016 by-census regarding the gender-age distribution of the Hong Kong population and the 2017 educational attainment (highest level attended) and economic activity status distributions obtained from the Census and Statistics Department.

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