Perception of Government Public Relations Practice by the People in Sabah: A Public Opinion Survey

MOHD HAMDAN BIN ADNAN
University Malaysia Sabah, Malaysia

Abstract
This survey focuses on how the people in Sabah perceived Malaysia’s governmental public relations practice and their perception of the government based upon it. It includes how the different types of mass media and its content that they expose themselves to have influence their image of the nation administration as well as its policies and implementations. Also included are how their own experience with the various government agencies has impacted their views with regard to those authorities specifically and the government generally. Method used for this public opinion survey is the random sampling technique. Respondents selected were 600 people based on four categories. All of them were located in and around Kota Kinabalu and chosen randomly. For the interview a structured questionnaire was prepared and pilot tested on 40 respondents with ten from each category. This survey finding further revealed that the media the public chose and exposed themselves to, do impact their perception of the government and its public relations, positively or negatively, depending on its content. However, the survey found that the impact was rather moderate with about half of the respondents declaring positively and the remainder not so positive and a few negatively.

Keywords: Democracy, government, government public relations, media, opinion survey, public opinion

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Prof. Mohd Hamdan Adnan is with Faculty of Humanities,Arts and Heritage, University Malaysia Sabah, Malaysia.