Back


Robert Ting-Yiu Chung
(Director of Public Opinion Programme, the University of Hong Kong)
 
Translated by Lee Wai Kin
(Research Executive, Public Opinion Programme, the University of Hong Kong)
 

Note: This article represents the view of the author and not the University of Hong Kong.

 
If we believe in Basic Law, then universal suffrage for the CE is to come sooner or later. At this moment, the media and polling practitioners should aim further and get prepared for the election culture in the future.
 
Because of this, the Public Opinion Programme at the University of Hong Kong has decided to conduct various election surveys including focus surveys, rolling surveys and election debate instant surveys during this CE election period. Since the CE is not elected by universal suffrage, HKUPOP would not conduct exit poll surveys. Apart from this, all other surveys are no different from direct district election. The author will try his best to perfect the rules of election survey by staying firm in this election. The in-depth discussion on public opinion and democratic development will be further discussed after the election.
 
The CE election debate on TV is something new this time. Besides insisting to conduct instant surveys for the TV debate that are well familiar to democratic societies, the author is also honoured, in cooperation with the eight media, to randomly select 100 to 120 people from the Hong Kong population to become public audience to ask questions to the candidates. The eight media also agreed the author to announce and explain its own selection method for civic education. Herewith the details of the selection method:
  • Besides HKUPOP, the eight media also invited Lingnan University to conduct the same selection. Since the two institutes had not discussed the arrangement before, their selection methods might be different. Under the principles of independent operation and mutual respect, each institute would only explain its own selection method, and be responsible for its own research design. Both parties did not discuss on the selection method.

  • Upon the approval sought from the eight media, HKUPOP began the selection on March 8. Similar to our normal telephone surveys, we first drew telephone numbers randomly from the residential telephone directories as "seed numbers", from which another set of numbers was generated using the "plus/minus one/two" method, in order to capture the unlisted numbers. Duplicated numbers were then filtered, and the remaining numbers were mixed in random order to produce the final telephone sample.

  • The staff of HKUPOP would dial the numbers in order. Once connected, we would state that we were commissioned by the eight media to randomly select 100 citizens for the CE election debate. The staff would select one Hong Kong citizen aged 18 years of above using the "birthday rule" from the target household, and then invite the respondent.

  • When inviting the respondent, we would briefly inform the meeting time and venue, transport arrangement on March 15, as well as the travel allowance of $50 for each invited citizen. We would ask for the education attainment of the target citizens, and then based on the six default quota groups, sort out the first and reserve lists of public audience according to the sequence of those accepting our invitations.

  • The six quota groups are: (1) males of primary education; (2) males of secondary education; (3) males of tertiary education; (4) females of primary education; (5) females of secondary education; and (6) females of tertiary education. According to the latest information of population statistics, the default quotas are 10, 25, 12, 16, 26 and 11, respectively. The total is 100 persons.

  • In case some invited citizens might change their minds, HKUPOP would set the combined first and reserve lists for each quota group to be 150% of the quota. Then, we would confirm each invited citizen and reduce the quota list to 120% before the debate. In other words, HKUPOP would expect 20 citizens would be absent for the debate in the end. But if it turns out that all 120 citizens would attend, they would all be accepted by the eight media.

  • The reason for using the quota system is because we found that, after analyzing each CE election survey, there are significant differences towards the support of the two candidates with people of different gender and education attainments. Therefore, in order to increase the representativeness of the citizens for the debate, we have adopted the quota system, so the distribution of the attendance would be comparable with the total population of Hong Kong.

  • Certainly, those who accepted the invitation should be considered as more aggressive and willing to express themselves. This deviation is common in all selection methods of similar kinds. The author believes that the six-quotas-random-selection method is more feasible in real situations.

  • To avoid any misunderstanding, HKUPOP would not conduct any opinion surveys with the invited citizens before confirming their attendance, so that their chance of attendance would not be affected by their political affiliation.
 
The aims of the above-mentioned explanation of HKUPOP's selection method are to increase the transparency of our work, and to pave the way to similar work in the future. We have nothing to do with the rules and regulations set by the eight media for the debate. We would only follow the guidelines of the debate, and explain to the invited citizens as possible.
 
Finally, we hope that the eight media and the two election camps would treat the audiences as honourable guests. Although the CE is not elected by universal suffrage, the audiences are indeed people's representatives, not political foils.