All surveys on people's instant reaction for policy addresses conducted by the POP Team are telephone surveys conducted by interviewers under close supervision.

Target population of these surveys are Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong of age 18 or above.

Telephone numbers are first selected randomly from telephone directories as seed numbers. Another set of numbers is then generated by using the plus/minus one/two method. Duplicate numbers are then screened out, and the remaining numbers mixed in a random order to become the final sample.

Upon successful contact being made with a target household, one member of the household is selected among those present using the "next birthday" rule.

Figures for the 2003 policy address instant poll have been adjusted according to the age and gender distributions of the Hong Kong population as reported in the Census. Figures for the polls conducted between 1997 and 2001, unless otherwise stated, are raw figures. Our experience shows that such weighting has only nominal effect on the figures.