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The following is issued on behalf of the Committee on the Promotion of Civic Education:
The Committee on the Promotion of Civic Education (CPCE) today (February 16) announced the results of an opinion survey on its past national education promotional activities.
The Chairman of the CPCE, Mr Joseph Lee, and the Convenor of CPCE's National Education Subcommittee, Mr Rock Chen, presented the major findings at a press conference.
The survey revealed that the majority of the respondents considered that CPCE's national education activities were effective in enhancing people's understanding of our country. Most of them rated TV programmes/TV announcements in the public interest (APIs) as the most effective means of promoting national education. As for the national anthem TV API series "Great Developments of Our Country", about half of the respondents who had watched the API series agreed that it was effective in enhancing viewers' sense of national identity and sense of belonging to the country.
Mr Chen said, "The survey results showed that a majority of the respondents considered that their understanding of our country had increased compared with five years ago. The committee will make reference to the results of this survey to plan for a national education promotional strategy such as reshuffling of resources to produce national education TV programmes, strengthening the contents of CPCE's website and organising promotional activities and exhibitions in the Civic Education Resource Centre."
The survey was conducted between June and September in 2010 to collect public views on CPCE's national education promotional activities; the most effective means of promoting national education and the national anthem TV API series "Great Developments of Our Country" produced by CPCE.
Consumer Search HK Ltd was commissioned to conduct the survey through focus group discussions and telephone interviews. A total of 3,004 respondents aged 15 or above were successfully drawn for telephone interviews. The overall response rate was 33%.
The major findings of the survey are as follows:
- 64.5% of the respondents considered that their knowledge and understanding of China had increased compared to five years ago; 36.4% of the respondents claimed that their national identity as "Chinese" had been strengthened. A similar proportion of respondents (35.1%) indicated that their sense of belonging to China had increased in the last five years.
- Asked about the effectiveness of existing national education promotional platforms, three quarters (75.5%) of the respondents considered TV programmes/ TV APIs the most effective means in promoting national education. More than 60% of the respondents perceived that promotions on radio (65.4%), exchange tours to Mainland China (62.9%) and TV quizzes (62.3%) were effective means as well.
- When considering all promotional platforms, TV programmes/TV APIs were still rated by most respondents (64.5%) as the most effective means of promoting national education, followed by promotions on radio (19.2%), webpage (17.6%), TV quizzes (16.6%), exchange tours/sightseeing tours to Mainland China (11.8%) and publications/brochures/leaflets (10.3%).
- Regarding national education topics, similar proportions of respondents expressed interest in the categories of "current developments of Mainland China" (41.3%) and "Chinese culture" (40.1%).
- Most of the respondents (40.8%) received national education information from promotional activities, followed by TV programmes (29.0%) and webpage (28.9%); 18.8% obtained national education information from publications.
- Seven in 10 (70.1%) of the respondents had watched the TV API "Great Developments of Our Country" over the last year. Nearly half of them agreed that it was effective in enhancing the public's national identity (51.6%) and their sense of belonging to China (46.8%); 30.7% of the respondents considered the API was effective in deepening their knowledge and understanding of China.
- There is a growing trend of respondents' perception on the effectiveness of the national anthem TV API in enhancing peoples' sense of belonging to the country and their national identity as compared to the 2006 and 2007 surveys.
Ends/Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Issued at HKT 16:55
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