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This paper aims to compare residential fixed-line telephone surveys with cell phone surveys for assessing the extent of the potential undercoverage issue evaluating the necessity and feasibility of conducting cell phone surveys or dual-frame telephone surveys in Hong Kong.

The research team simultaneously carried out a conventional fixed-line telephone survey and a cell phone survey in 2015 with similar features on survey design, sampling and data collection procedures. Two samples with sample size of 801 and 1,203 were achieved separately. Data collected were analysed to see to what extent survey findings will be biased if the sampling frame of telephone surveys is solely based on residential fixed-line numbers in Hong Kong, and if such a bias does exist, whether a survey conducted through cell phones or by adding a cell phone-only (CO) group would be an ideal solution for it.

The findings show that the cooperation rates for the cell phone survey were much lower than those of the fixed-line telephone survey. The respondents from two surveys were fairly different. However, estimates of most commonly used socio-demographic characteristics from the latter group had the least bias compared with population statistics. Supplanting the traditional fixed-line survey with a cell phone survey or supplementing it with a CO group will not make the resulting sample a better representative of the population but it will amplify the sample bias on the major social socio-demographic characteristics.

This paper empirically compares the two types of telephone surveys in a well-designed scientific study.

This study aims to offer authors’ humble yet unique experiences about developing an undergraduate sociology programme in an increasingly divided city.

In this study, the authors reflect upon the development of a new sociology programme in Hong Kong in which a wide spectrum of expectations from different stakeholders, together with their own sense of mission towards sociology education, have set a very challenging stage.

Developing an undergraduate sociology programme has never been easy, and there is no self-complacence as far as developing a programme that is of both academic and social values.

This paper offers a first-hand account of how sociology educators have developed a new sociology programme in a unique social context.

Through the study of the Liberal Studies reform in Hong Kong, this paper aims to investigate to what extent the curriculum reform makes a difference in the achievement gap between middle-class and lower-class students. Specifically, it examines the variation of the “class gap” between Liberal Studies and other traditional, core subjects in terms of the public examination results, and the major mediators underlying the class effect on the results.

Data from a survey of 1,123 students from 15 schools who studied the new curriculum between 2009-2010 and 2011-2012 in Hong Kong were analyzed using the hierarchical multiple regression models.

Students’ class backgrounds, mainly indicated by parental education, continue to make a substantive contribution to the achievement gap.

Given that Liberal Studies’ examination is compulsory for university entrance, the sensitivity of this reform to existing educational inequalities has a significant impact on students’ chances of entering local universities.

Sociologists have long observed the class gap in education, and this paper adds an important exogenous source, a curriculum change, to the analysis. The Liberal Studies reform has provided a unique opportunity to examine the potential effect of a curriculum change on the class gap. In addition, in view of the absence of empirical evidence in this topic, this paper is an effort to build the evidence base for understanding the outcomes of the reform.