Why public survey on Hong Kong’s long-term development is just mindless number-crunching

The next time the government announces the results of a “public engagement exercise”, gauging citizens’ opinions on a policy proposal, remember this computing term: garbage in, garbage out. That is, flawed input will result in faulty output.

Garbage in, garbage out encapsulates the poor design and sloppy methodology of government-sponsored surveys which produce worthless results.

Take the latest “public engagement” on Hong Kong’s long-term development plan, dubbed 2030+.

Costing HK$1.04 million and conducted by the University of Hong Kong’s Social Sciences Research Centre, the survey used no statistical sampling, which involves selecting a random representative set of people to estimate the responses of the whole population. Without statistical sampling, those polled are not a representative sample of citizens and no valid conclusion can be drawn from the results, as any professional pollster can tell you.

For 2030+, the government solicited a huge quantity of feedback, ranging from comments expressed in large and small groups to answers to questionnaires. Thousands of individuals and organisations also submitted petitions.