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

From December 4 to 27, 2022, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) conducted its own all-Ukrainian public opinion survey "Omnibus". Bythemethodofcomputer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI) based on a random sample of mobile phone numbers (with random generation of phone numbers and subsequent statistical weighting), 995 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 only 1 respondent (out of 995) who currently live in occupied settlements. It is important to note that although the views of the respondents who lived in the occupation were somewhat different, the general tеndencies 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.

For a long time, the Ukrainian authorities have been warning Ukrainians that the winter of 2022-2023 may be difficult. In September 2022, that is, even before the onset of cold weather and before the start of massive shelling of the Ukrainian energy infrastructure, we asked the question to what extent respondents consider their families prepared for possible problems with heating in winter. In December 2022, we repeated this question.

In September, 70% of respondents claimed that their household is more or less prepared for possible winter heating problems, although only 24% of them consider themselves completely prepared, while 47% consider themselves more or less prepared and state that "there is still some, what needs to be done to prepare".

As of December, 74% of respondents considered their households prepared for possible problems with heating in winter, including the share of those who considered them completely prepared increased from 24% to 34% (consider themselves rather prepared, but at the same time believe that there is still something to be done - 40%).

The share of respondents who considered their families unprepared in September was 24%, in December – 21%.

 Graph1. 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, residents of villages and small towns, and more affluent respondents to consider themselves better prepared.

On the other hand, there are more significant differences if we compare the share of those who consider themselves "completely prepared". In the regional dimension, the share of " completely prepared" decreases from 43% in the West to 26% in the East (although even in the East, 68% consider themselves more or less prepared overall). According to the type of settlement, the share decreases from 48% among residents of villages to 22% among residents of large cities. According to the level of family affluence, among the most affluent respondents, 38% consider themselves "completely prepared", and this indicator decreases to 19% among the least affluent Ukrainians. Separately, we note that among IDPs, 26% are "completely prepared" against 35% 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?

A. Hrushetskyi, comments on the survey results:

We repeatedly asked the question of preparedness for problems with heating in winter after the large-scale destruction that was caused to the Ukrainian energy infrastructure, as well as after the onset of cold weather. That is, the absolute majority of respondents have already experienced problems on a practical level and can more objectively assess the preparedness of their family.

Current indicators of preparedness are quite high, considering the actual level of problems in the country, and reflect, on the one hand, a high level of optimism, and on the other hand, a high level of adaptability to changing and often really complex realities. Such adaptability is an important "brick" in the general stability of the Ukrainian people and is another evidence of preparedness to continue resisting the aggressor.

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)

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. As of December, the UN estimates the number of Ukrainian refugees at almost 7.9 million. Obviously, due to various reasons, it is difficult to consider these data unequivocally accurate, but in general, the quite significant scale of departure from the country is understandable. 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 15-20% 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, 12% 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 - only 1 respondent out of 995 surveyed. According to our estimates, the territory occupied by Russia as of the beginning of September (occupied after February 24, 2022) accounted for about 9% of the entire 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), as well as the fact that significant territories of Kharkiv and Kherson oblasts were liberated from this period, we estimate that no more than 3-5% of the total adult population of Ukraine were unavailable due to communication problems.

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 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. To assess the sincerity of responses to sensitive questions, in July we conducted another experiment using the "imagined acquaintance" method. The results showed that the respondents generally answered the survey questions honestly. That is, we have reason to say that during the interview, the respondents really answer our questions sincerely.