Survey on the Secretary for Education and Educational Issues in Hong KongBack

Research Background

In May 2016, Office of Ip Kin Yuen Legislative Councillor commissioned The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at The University of Hong Kong to conduct this “Survey on the Secretary for Education and Educational Issues in Hong Kong”. The survey comprises a public survey and a teachers’ survey, which targeted at Cantonese-speaking citizens of Hong Kong of age 18 or above and members of the Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union (HKPTU) respectively. The main objective of the survey was to gauge the views of Hong Kong citizens and local teachers on the performance of the Secretary for Education and some important educational issues of Hong Kong.

The research instrument used in this study was designed entirely by the POP Team after consulting the Office of Ip Kin Yuen Legislative Councillor. 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 the commissioning organization 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.

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.

For the public survey, 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. As for the teachers’ survey, a list of telephone numbers of the target respondents was provided by the commissioning organization. They were then randomly selected to become the final sample.

The target population of the public survey was Hong Kong residents aged 18 or above who spoke Cantonese. After telephone contact was successfully established with a target household, one eligible person was selected using “next birthday rule” for the interview. Telephone interviews were conducted during the period of 24 to 26 May, 2016. A total of 1,010 Hong Kong residents of age 18 or above were successfully interviewed. The response rate of this survey was 70.0%, and the standard sampling error for percentages based on this sample was less than 1.6 percentage points. In other words, the sampling error for all percentages using the total sample was less than plus/minus 3.1 percentage points at 95% confidence level.

On the other hand, telephone interviews for the teachers’ survey were conducted during the period of 24 May to 8 June, 2016. A total of 1,002 members of the HKPTU were successfully interviewed. The response rate of this survey was 79.8%, and the standard sampling error for percentages based on this sample was less than 1.6 percentage points. In other words, the sampling error for all percentages using the total sample was less than plus/minus 3.1 percentage points at 95% confidence level.

To ensure representativeness of the findings, the raw data of the public survey have been rim-weighted according to provisional figures obtained from the Census and Statistics Department regarding the gender-age distribution of the Hong Kong population in 2015 year-end and the educational attainment (highest level attended) distribution collected in the 2011 Census. Figures of the public survey are based on the weighted sample, while those of the teachers’ survey are based on the raw sample without any weighting applied.