Survey on Willingness to be Carer of Parents 2018Back

Research Background

Elderly Care Services of The Salvation Army commissioned the Public Opinion Programme (POP) of The University of Hong Kong in May 2018 to conduct this “Survey on Willingness to be Carer of Parents 2018” targeting Cantonese-speaking local citizens of age 18 or above who are not taking care of their parents’ daily needs at the time of interview. The survey aimed to understand Hong Kong people’s willingness and opinions on taking care of parents.

The research instrument used in this study was designed entirely by the POP Team after consulting Elderly Care Services of The Salvation Army, while both POP and Elderly Care Services of The Salvation Army had equal say in the final instrument. Moreover, fieldwork operations, data collection and data analysis were conducted independently by the POP Team, without interference from any party. In other words, although the content of the questionnaire mainly came from the commissioning organization, 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 interviewers under close supervision. All data were collected by our interviewers using a Web-based Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (Web-CATI) system invented by the research team, which allowed real-time data capture and consolidation. To ensure data quality, on top of on-site supervision, voice recording, screen capturing and camera surveillance were used to monitor the interviewers’ performance.

Telephone numbers are 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 are then eliminated according to computer and manual dialing records to produce the final sample.

The target population of this survey was Cantonese-speaking local citizens of age 18 or above who are not taking care of their parents’ daily needs at the time of interview. 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 18 to 30 July 2018. A total of 707 eligible subjects were successfully interviewed. The effective response rate of this survey was 54.6%, and the standard sampling error for percentages based on this sample was less than 1.9 percentage points. In other words, the sampling error for all percentages using the total sample was less than plus/minus 3.8 percentage points at 95% confidence level.