Press Release on July 1, 2019
HKPORI Provides July 1 Rally Head-counting Platform to Civil Society
- Since 2003, Hong Kong Public Opinion Program (formerly known as “HKUPOP”, now as “HKPOP”) has been conducting head-counts at all “July 1 Rallies”, with the aim at promoting scientific spirit and providing scientific figures to the society. Following the development in recent years, HKPOP invited secondary school teachers and students to participate in the civil rally head-counting program this year, where HKPOP provides theoretical and technical support to them as well as an online platform to release their counts round the clock. HKPOP hopes to promote and popularize the scientific method of rally head-counting, and to advocate rational, objective and proper analytical thinking. The civil research teams will take full responsibility for their head-counting figures.
- The whole civil head-counting research program comprises 3 stages: (1) Seminar and preparation before July 1; (2) On-site participation on July 1; (3) Follow-up arrangement after July 1. The latest arrangement on July 1 is as follows – HKPOP will provide support to the following research teams to conduct head-counting at two different rally points, while each research team will be responsible for their own counts:
- “St. Francis Xavier’s School, Tsuen Wan Research Team” counting on the footbridge at the junction of Percival Street and Hennessy Road in Causeway Bay;
- “A group of Enthusiastic Teachers and Students Research Team” counting on the footbridge at the junction of Hennessy Road and Arsenal Street in Wan Chai.
- HKPOP will provide an online software to release all the counting figures by the research teams round the clock through our website at pori.hk. Please note: all counts will only include the number of rally participants passing through the counting points, those who do not pass through them because of early departure, late participation or using other routes will not be counted. According to the past studies of POP, the real headcounts should be 1.3 to 1.6 times of the counted figures.
- President of PORI Robert Chung explains, “HKPOP provides a head-counting platform to civil society in order to facilitate self-learning head-counts and to appreciate the spirit of science. According to past experience, any rally with over 100 thousand people is already very spectacular, and the real number is not easy for ordinary people to apprehend. Since there are already multiple research teams using different methods to count the figures today, the organizers should not concern themselves with the figure that much, but should rather focus on maintaining good order and interpret people’s appeals.”
- HKPOP would also open its platform to the organizers, the Police, the media and scholars for uploading their headcount method and projection figures, if they are prepared to open such information to the public.