ii
Report on Pilot Survey of 100 Blue Collar Workers Employed in
Manufacturing Industry in Hong Kong - Main findings and Brief
Indicate of Revision of Interview Schedule
I Background of the Respondents
(i) Personal characteristics of the respondents
Age and Sex: We attempted to control for these factors in the
See below for sample's
selection of the 100 pilot respondents.
distribution.
Table 1
Age/Sex of sample
Male
Female
Total
Under 30 years
23
30 years & over Total
23
46
45
9
54
68
1 8 1
32
100
G
With regard to male/female ratio, the samples ratio of 46 men to
54 women seems close to the 1976 figures for manufacturing as a
whole where 49% of the persons engaged were men and 51% women.
(See Employment Statistics March, 1976 Table 2)
With regard to age breakdown, there are no figures available for
this breakdown for manufacturing in 1976. The 1971 Census Report
does give a breakdown for the different age groups in manufacturing
(pp 95ff) but it seems likely that there has been a significant
shift in employment population since this census because the sex
ratio in 1971 in manufacturing was in fact 57 men to 43 women.
(See the vertical total column of table 2 below.) This change in
the sex ratio in manufacturing between 1971 and 1976 may very well
be a reflection of the boom in the electronics industry in
Hong Kong which brought large numbers of young girls on to the
shop floor. Thus it would be reasonable to argue that the 1971
age breakdown of the manufacturing population would underestimate
the proportion of young people employed in general. A further
difficulty arises with the 1971 Census breakdown by age due to the
fact that the age groupings used are 10-14, 25-39, 40-54, 55 and
over. However, a reasonable guess of the proportions of the
manufacturing population over and under 30 can be made from the