The press release was prepared by Anton Hrushetskyi, deputy director of KIIS

From September 7 to 13, 2022, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) conducted its own all-Ukrainian public opinion survey "Omnibus". By the method of computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI) based on a random sample of mobile phone numbers (with random generation of phone numbers and subsequent statistical weighting), 2,000 respondents living in all regions of Ukraine (except AR of Crimea) were interviewed. The survey was conducted with adult (aged 18 and older) citizens of Ukraine who, at the time of the survey, lived on the territory of Ukraine (within the boundaries controlled by the authorities of Ukraine until February 24, 2022). The sample did not include residents of territories that were not temporarily controlled by the authorities of Ukraine until February 24, 2022 (AR of Crimea, the city of Sevastopol, certain districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts), and the survey was not conducted with citizens who left the country after February 24, 2022.

Formally, under normal circumstances, the statistical error of such a sample (with a probability of 0.95 and taking into account the design effect of 1.1) did not exceed 3.4% for indicators close to 50%, 3.0% for indicators close to 25%, 2.1% - for indicators close to 10%, 1.5% - for indicators close to 5%.

Under conditions of war, in addition to the specified formal error, a certain systematic deviation is added. In particular, if back in May, among all the respondents we interviewed, 2.5-4% lived in the territories occupied after February 24 (and this corresponded to the percentage of those who live there, because the generation of telephone numbers was random), now, due to the occupiers turning off the telephone connection we managed to interview fewer respondents living in occupied settlements, in particular, their number is 0.3%. It is important to note that although the views of the respondents who lived in the occupation were somewhat different, the general tendencies were quite similar. That is, the impossibility of interviewing such respondents does not significantly affect the quality of the results. There are other factors that can affect the quality of results in "wartime" conditions (see Annex 2).

In general, we believe that the obtained results are still highly representative and allow a fairly reliable analysis of public attitudes.

For a long time, the Ukrainian authorities have been warning Ukrainians that the winter of 2022-2023 may be difficult. In September 2022, we asked the question to what extent respondents consider their families prepared for possible problems with heating in winter. In addition, we asked whether there is a shelter / bomb shelter near the respondents' residence. 

The majority of respondents - 70% - claim that their household is more or less prepared for possible problems with heating in winter. At the same time, only 24% of them consider themselves completely prepared, while 47% consider themselves rather prepared and claim that "there is still something to be done to prepare." 24% of Ukrainians do not consider themselves prepared, including 12% are not prepared at all. 

Graph 1. The authorities warn the population about possible difficulties with heating in winter. And how would you rate the preparedness of your household for possible problems with heating in winter?

In Table 1, the data are presented in the section of individual socio-demographic categories of the population. As can be seen, on the one hand, the majority in each category consider themselves rather or completely prepared for possible problems, although there is a tendency for Westerners, non-IDPs and more affluent respondents to consider themselves better prepared.

On the other hand, there are more significant differences if to compare the share of those who consider themselves "completely prepared". In the regional dimension, the share of "completely prepared" decreases from 30% in the West to 12% in the East (although even in the East, 59% consider themselves more or less prepared overall). According to the type of settlement, the share decreases from 35% among residents of villages to 17% among residents of large cities. According to the level of family affluence among the wealthiest respondents, 38% consider themselves "completely prepared", and this indicator drops to 15% among the least wealthy Ukrainians. Separately, we note that among IDPs, 15% are "completely prepared" compared to 25% among respondents who are not IDPs.

Table 1. The authorities warn the population about possible difficulties with heating in winter. And how would you rate the preparedness of your household for possible problems with heating in winter?

57% of respondents say there is a shelter near their home, and 42% of them say it is in more or less normal condition (the remaining 14% say it is in poor condition). At the same time, 40% of respondents claim that there is no shelter near their home. 

Graph 2. Is there a shelter / bomb shelter near your home?

Residents of the West and the Center, residents of larger cities, more affluent respondents speak somewhat more often about the availability of shelter (including in more or less normal condition).

Table2. Is there a shelter / bomb shelter near your home?

A. Hrushetskyi, comments on the survey results:

Regarding preparedness for the heating season, it should be taken into account that we are talking about the subjective self-assessment of the respondents, which may differ significantly from the objective situation. Rather optimistic assessments of the respondents regarding their own preparedness for possible problems may be a consequence of the generally optimistic mood of Ukrainians (as was shown in a recent survey by KIIS, despite the war, almost 90% of Ukrainians are optimistic about the future of Ukraine). From the point of view of the war, rather optimistic expectations about winter are an important indicator, since the possibility of using this factor as a lever of influence of the aggressor on Ukraine decreases. Let's hope that the central and local authorities are ready for different scenarios of the development of the situation.

It is also important to draw the attention of the authorities to the fact that 40% do not have bomb shelters or shelters and another 14% do, but they are in poor condition. Of particular concern is income stratification, where less affluent respondents have access to (what they say is) shelters with worse conditions.

Annex 1. Formulation of questions from the questionnaire

The authorities warn the population about possible difficulties with heating in winter. And how would you rate the preparedness of your household for possible problems with heating in winter?

(% among all respondents)

Is there a shelter / bomb shelter near your home?

(% among all respondents)

Annex 2. Methodological comments on the representativeness of telephone surveys conducted during the war

Even before the full-scale Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, there were a number of factors that negatively affected the representativeness of the polls (for example, the absence of a census for more than 20 years). A full-scale war, of course, greatly affects representativeness and complicates the work of sociologists, but does not make it impossible. Access to reliable data on the state of public moods remains relevant both for Ukrainians themselves and for our foreign partners (who, as the events of the past 5 months have shown, often underestimated and did not understand Ukraine and Ukrainians).

At the same time, in order to maintain objectivity, it is necessary to understand what limitations the war imposes on the conduct of sociological surveys. First of all, we pay attention to large-scale population movements. In September, the UN report mentioned 7.4 million Ukrainian refugees. Obviously, due to various reasons, it is difficult to consider these data to be unequivocally accurate, but in general, the rather significant scale of departure from the country is clear. There is no exact data on how many of them are adult citizens, but, most likely, it is about half. Among about 30 million adult citizens (estimated at the time of the full-scale invasion), it can be roughly estimated that about 13-15% have left the country, and it is impossible to reliably survey these citizens using telephone interviews. Even more citizens have become internally displaced persons, but they have a much smaller impact on the quality of telephone surveys, since almost all of these citizens have mobile phones and are reachable to participate in the survey (in fact, 16% of the respondents of this survey are IDPs).

Another important problem is the accessibility for the survey of the population of the territories that were occupied after February 24, 2022, due to the conduct of intensive military operations or due to interruptions in telephone connection. Now there is practically no connection. In May, 2.5-4% of respondents lived in these territories, now in the sample of residents of these territories - 0.3%. According to our current estimates, the territory occupied by Russia as of the beginning of September (occupied after February 24, 2022) accounted for about 9% of the total adult population. Taking into account the mass exodus of the population from these territories (most likely, we are talking about at least half of the population), we estimate that no more than 3-5% of the total adult population of Ukraine were inaccessible due to connection problems. Successful actions and the liberation of a number of territories in the Kharkiv region further reduce this percentage.

In our opinion, a more significant impact on representativeness can be either a generally lower willingness of citizens with "pro-Russian" attitudes to participate in surveys, or the insincerity of those who did take part in the survey (taking into account the obvious facts and prevailing opinions in the media regarding the Russian invasion , some citizens will not want to say what they really think "in public"). If to talk about the general willingness of respondents to participate in the survey, then in recent surveys we see either the same indicators or somewhat lower (although it should be borne in mind that the lower willingness to participate of "pro-Russian" citizens can be compensated by the higher willingness to participate of "pro-Ukrainian"-minded citizens).

We conducted a methodical experiment in May, which shows that the citizens who are currently participating in the surveys in terms of demographic characteristics and substantive attitudes are close to those who participated in the surveys until February 24, 2022. Preliminarily, we see some shift in the direction of "pro-Ukrainian"-minded citizens, which is reflected in up to 4-6% deviations for individual questions (in the direction of more frequent selection of answers that correspond to the "pro-Ukrainian" interpretation of events). In our opinion, in the current conditions, this is a rather optimistic indicator. However, this experiment does not give an answer as to how sincere the respondents are now in their answers.

Taking into account our own observations and the experience of conducting surveys over many years, we still remain optimistic that, for the most part, respondents answer the questions sincerely. For example, the "imagined acquaintance" experiment shows little difference with the direct question. In addition, we assume that the demographic categories of citizens who have gone abroad and are unreachable for a telephone survey, at least now, do not differ very significantly in terms of a number of substantive attitudes from similar demographic categories of citizens who have remained in Ukraine.

As a result, in our opinion, we should talk about a certain decrease in representativeness and an increase in error (in addition to the previously mentioned formal error, a certain systematic deviation is added due to the factors considered above), but at the same time, the obtained results still retain high representativeness and allow for a fairly reliable analysis of public moods of the population.