Survey on Public Awareness of Sustainable Food and DietBack

Research Background

In February 2018, the Hong Kong Society of Medical Professionals (HKSMP), supported by Sponge Creation Lab Food Medicine Lab Division on a voluntary basis, commissioned Public Opinion Programme (POP) of The University of Hong Kong to conduct this survey, which aims to gauge Hong Kong public’s awareness of and attitude towards sustainable food.

The research instrument used in this study was designed by POP after consulting the HKSMP and Sponge Creation Lab Food Medicine Lab Division. All fieldwork operations, data collection and data analysis were conducted independently by POP without interference from any party. In other words, POP was given full autonomy to design and conduct the survey and it 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 (including both landline and mobile numbers) 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 Hong Kong citizens aged 18 or above. For landline samples, 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 March 15 to 20, 2018. A total of 1,014 eligible subjects were successfully interviewed, including 808 landline samples and 206 mobile samples. The effective response rate of this survey was 61.1%, 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 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) distribution and economic activity status distribution obtained from the Census and Statistics Department.