Since its establishment on December 16, the Public Opinion Poll Center, attached to Hunan Provincial Statistics Bureau, has been extremely busy, with all six staff members having to work weekends.

The center was set up to solicit public opinion and provide feedback for Party and government decision-makers. Besides some self-designed research, most will be commissioned by government.

It has completed two polls so far: one on the impact of the rise in interest rates on urban families' lives; the other on what people think of the provincial government's "eight commitments," which include increasing employment and reemployment, and compensation and resettlement.

The latter was an evaluation that used 46 indicators to measure the perceived efficiency and sincerity of government, contracted by the provincial government itself.

The center adopts a CATI (computer-assisted telephone interview) method and all interviewers are trained college students. They read on-screen questions to interviewees over the phone and input responses directly into their computers.

Selection of interviewees is by random sampling, and supervisors monitor operations from a small glass booth to avoid falsification of data.

In the "eight commitments" poll, interviewers made 1,558 phone calls and, excluding wrong numbers, busy lines, no answers and refusals to take part, 843 were responsive.

The CATI system is a popular method for its speed and accuracy, while using the Provincial Statistics Bureau's database of telephone numbers and demographic information gives additional reliability and credibility.

"Feedback from the 'eight commitments' poll was reported directly to decision-makers, which resulted in three workgroups being sent to rural areas to improve their working styles," said Liang Naiwen, the center's deputy director.

At present, several polls are being conducted, on issues such as public transportation and water supply in Changsha City, and public opinions before and after Hunan Provincial People's Congress and Hunan Provincial People's Political Consultative Conference sessions.

The mayor of Changsha City said it will conduct regular public opinion polls on all public utilities and make improvements accordingly.

Hunan Provincial People's Congress is also discussing ways to select topics for investigation and to present findings, Wang Jiong, director of the provincial legislature' Information Center, told China Newsweek, and may establish long-term cooperation with the poll center.

The center already has a full schedule for the first quarter of this year. "We set up such a center to meet the needs of government departments. It is a symbol of informed government and democracy," said Liang Naiwen. The Public Opinion Poll Center is publicly funded and not-for-profit.

China's first public opinion pollster was the Public Opinion Research Center (PORC), set up in Guangzhou in 1988. It is a non-governmental organization affiliated to Guangzhou Municipal People's Political Consultative Conference.

It has conducted polls on topics including commodity prices, public security, housing reform, traffic, sanitation, state-owned enterprise reform, employment, social security and medical treatment. It can also run quick investigations for urgent cases.

Some of its reports are presented to government departments and have contributed a lot to decision-making. Others are presented to the media. Over 80 percent of the findings of self-designed polls are presented to the public, one head of the center said.

A few years ago, the PORC cooperated with Guangzhou TV to create a talk show, Yangcheng Forum, to bring together the city's People's Congress and the public. It offers a platform for people to participate in the deliberation and administration of government affairs, and was the first program of its kind in China.

In 1998, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) set up the International Statistical Information Center. At the start of last year, the NBS held a special conference, calling on statistics departments in all provinces and cities to use CATI to conduct opinion polls.

At present, the method has been used in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Henan, Shaanxi, Shandong, Jiangxi, Hubei, Fujian and Guangxi. CATI system is also being set up in Chongqing and Sichuan, and preparations for it are underway in Nanjing.

Apart from governmental pollsters, there are also some privately owned centers, such as the Horizon Research Group. Besides work commissioned by government, they mostly conduct commercial market research.

Ke Huixin, vice chairman of the Association of China's Market Information Investigation Industry and professor at the Communication University of China, stressed the importance of polling centers. Both governmental and non-governmental polling centers should be independent and professional, Ke said.

In the past, central and local governments did not refer to public opinion polls, and if they did, the findings were not published. The change in attitudes toward gathering and being informed by public opinion in this way has been a gradual one.

(China Newsweek, translated by Li Shen and Yuan Fang for China.org.cn, January 27, 2005)