The press release was prepared by Anton Hrushetskyi, the Deputy Director of KIIS

During October 21-23, 2022, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) conducted its own all-Ukrainian public opinion survey "Omnibus". Bythemethodofcomputer-assistedtelephoneinterviews(CATI) based on a random sample of mobile phone numbers (with random generation of phone numbers and subsequent statistical weighting), 1,000 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 the 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 moods of the population.

A number of researches conducted after February 24, 2022, testify that the absolute majority of Ukrainians in one form or another are involved in the fight against the aggressor[1]. According to the actual practices during this period, the war for Ukrainians really became national. At the same time, a somewhat different view of the resistance is also important - do Ukrainians subjectively feel that they are part of the resistance to the enemy.

We asked the respondents the question "To what extent do you personally feel that you are part of the national resistance of the enemy?", and the respondents had to give an answer on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 meant absolutely do not feel it, 5 - partly feel, partly not, difficult to say for sure, and 10 - feel completely part of the national resistance. In this scale, answers 7-10 can be interpreted as self-enrollment/a tendency to feel part of the national resistance. At the same time, answers 0-3, on the contrary, meant that the respondent does not consider himself a part of the resistance. Intermediate answers 4-6 testified to partial inclusion in the national resistance.

As can be seen in graph 1, the majority of Ukrainians - 60% - feel that they are part of the national resistance (of them, 43% fully feel part of it, and 17% rather feel). Another 32% feel at least partially involved in the resistance to the enemy. At the same time, only 4% of respondents rather or at all do not feel that they are part of the resistance to the enemy.

Graph 1. Sense of belonging to the national resistance to the enemy

Graph 2 shows the data in a regional dimension - depending on where the respondents lived at the time of the survey. From West to East, the share of those who feel part of the national resistance decreases from 68% to 48%. This is due to an increase from 26% to 38% of the share of those who gave intermediate assessments of a partial sense of inclusion. That is, in general, in all regions, the majority feels at least partially part of the national resistance, and no more than 6% do not feel this way.

Graph2. Sense of belonging to the national resistance to the enemy in the regional dimension (where the respondents currently live)

On graph 3, the data are shown in the section of those who chose Ukrainian or Russian for the interview. Among those who chose the Ukrainian language for the interview, 63% feel part of the resistance, against 42% among those who chose the Russian language. At the same time, among the latter there are more people who feel partial belonging - 45% against 30%. And in both categories, an absolute minority (respectively, 4% and 7%) do not feel that they belong to the national resistance. That is, both among the respondents who chose the Ukrainian language for the interview and among the respondents who chose the Russian language, the majority at least partially feel that they belong to the national resistance.

Graph3. Sense of belonging to the national resistance to the enemy among those who chose Ukrainian or Russian for the interview

A. Hrushetskyi, comments on the survey results:

Many Ukrainian and foreign politicians and experts note the unity of Ukrainian society, which was manifested in various forms of mass support for the Defense Forces and in general resistance to difficult circumstances.

At the same time, it is also important that living this experience, most Ukrainians on a subjective level feel that they are not just live observers of the events, but real participants of the national resistance. This common experience is now and will continue to be the social "glue" for maintaining cohesion, continuing the formation of a civil political nation, and overcoming various problems. It is important that the narrative of resistance as a nationwide phenomenon and the involvement of everyone (to the extent possible) to repel the aggressor is broadcast at various levels both within the country and abroad.

Annex 1. Formulation of questions from the questionnaire

To what extent do you personally feel that you are part of the national resistance to the enemy? Rate on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 – absolutely do not feel it, 5 -partly feel, partly not, difficult to say for sure, and 10 - completely feel part of the national resistance.

(% 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 recent 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 meaningful 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 5-7% 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.