Page:Hong Kong Basic Law consultation report vol. 1.djvu/41

 5.1.2.8 Sample survey has long been employed in the business world as a scientific, objective and fair method. As the questions to be surveyed in a commercial context are relatively simple and clear, the design of the questionnaire is a relatively easy job. If the survey is on political, social or current affairs issues, especially when there are divergent opinions on the existing issue of political structure, the presentation of the questions, the contents of the answers and the number of choices available will each be a possible source of further disputes among people of different political views. There are different opinions on the process and arrangements for the design of the questionnaire: 1. The Executive Committee will only give some objective instructions and the research company will be solely responsible for the design of the questionnaire; 2. An independent monitoring authority will be set up to monitor the process of the survey, but no definite proposal on the composition of this authority has been made yet. This indicates that people of different political views will try their best to influence and monitor the process of the survey to ensure that the results of the survey will be favourable to their own camp. Since the CCBL is an organization comprising people of various political views, it is difficult to guarantee that the survey will be free from any political influence and conducted objectively and fairly. In fact, regarding the presentation of some political questions, it is quite impossible to find a standard that is objective, unbiased and acceptable to all. In this respect, lessons can be drawn from the experience of the Hong Kong Government in its public opinion poll conducted in 1987 on the reform of the political structure in Hong Kong.

5.1.2.9 The CCBL has not denied the function of public opinion polls as a means of collecting opinions from the public, or their scientific nature. But it must be pointed out that a public opinion poll will not bring in new opinions. It may appear that a public opinion poll will not exclude new opinions, but in fact it will, since only several major opinions will be selected from existing opinions for the survey. And it is on this basis that the inclinations of the public towards these opinions are quantified. During this process, we first have to selectively choose a number of opinions from the many because the number of opinions regarding a certain issue, e.g. the political models, may be too large. It will be impossible to list out each and every one of them. Only a few of them can be selected to be surveyed. Even if all the models could be presented in the questionnaire, any new opinions put forward after the questionnaire has been designed would not be processed. For instance, if the CCBL decided early this year to