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

From May 26 to June 5, 2023, 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), 984 respondents living in all regions of Ukraine (except the Autonomous Republic 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 in May 2022, 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, not a single respondent who currently lives in occupied settlements was included in the sample (along with this, out of a total of 984 respondents, 32 respondents lived in a settlement that is currently occupied until February 24, 2022). It is important to note that although the views of the respondents who lived in the occupation were somewhat different, the general trends 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 ofthepopulation.

KIIS has been asking Ukrainians the question "Do you consider yourself a happy person?" for more than 20 years. In particular, we asked it in December 2021, 2 months before the full-scale Russian invasion, and in September 2022, already after the invasion. In May 2023, we re-asked the question to understand the dynamics after more than a year of large-scale war.

In December 2021, on the eve of the invasion, 71% of Ukrainians considered themselves happy, and 15%, on the contrary, did not consider themselves so. As of May 2023, despite more than a year of full-scale war, the indicators remain practically the same. Now 70% of Ukrainians consider themselves happy, do not consider themselves happy - 16%.

Graph 1. Do you consider yourself a happy person?

In Table 1, data are shown in dynamics for individual socio-demographic categories of the population. As before, the trend that younger and wealthier respondents are happier remains. Also, now we see that the share of those who are happy decreases from the West to the East (although even among respondents who lived in the East until February 24, 2022, the majority consider themselves happy).

Separately, it is worth noting that among IDPs, fewer people consider themselves happy - 54% compared to 72% among non-IDPs.

Table 1. Do you consider yourself a happy person?

A. Hrushetskyi, comments on the survey results:

Self-assessment of happiness is one of the important social indicators of the well-being of the population and an indirect indicator of "strength" against the background of the difficult war period.

Other KIIS surveys show a number of negative consequences for ordinary Ukrainians as a result of the Russian invasion: 78% talk about the injury or death of at least one of their relatives or friends, 64% - about a decrease in income, 29% - about the loss of a job. In addition, 64% note deterioration of mental health, 55% - physical health.

Therefore, it is fundamentally important that the happiness indicator has practically not changed both in general and among certain categories of the population. Ukrainians, despite the sea of difficulties and challenges today, find ways to adapt to the complex reality and move forward.

V. Paniotto, comments on the survey results:

The results of our research look, as in September 2022, unexpected. How can people continue to be happy when there is a terrible war going on? There are several considerations in this regard.

Firstly, the mechanism of happiness formation is not simple and linear. For example, an increase in wealth does not always lead to an increase in the level of happiness. In the USA, from 1985 to 2005, the real income of the population doubled, and the level of happiness did not change. The fact is that the level of happiness can be conventionally represented as a fraction, the numerator of which is the level of achievements in a broad sense (the level of material well-being, creative work, a loved one, etc.), and the denominator is the level of encroachments (for example, what level of material well-being a person considers sufficient). The level of encroachments itself is formed depending on the level of achievements of the respondent's reference group.  As the American happiness researcher R. Layard wrote, people do not become happier when their entire society becomes richer, people become happier when they become richer than their neighbors. In a war where millions of people are suffering, the level of encroachment (the denominator of the happiness formula) goes down significantly, and this compensates for the hardships that people go through. It is clear that those in the direct combat zone become unhappy, but they are only a few percent.

Secondly, the level of happiness is influenced by many factors, for example, the behavior of children, intimate relationships, relationships with friends, etc. And although the material conditions of life have deteriorated significantly and many people suffer from separation from their families, there are factors that increase the level of happiness. The cohesion of our society has increased significantly, regional differences have decreased, the value of the state for the population of Ukraine has increased, mutual support has increased, and the social and psychological climate has improved. All this increases the level of happiness of Ukrainians.

Annex 1. Formulation of questions from the questionnaire

Do you consider yourself a happy person? (% 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 May, 2023, the UN estimates the number of Ukrainian refugees at almost 8.3 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, 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 communication. Now there is practically no connection. In May 2022, 2.5-4% of respondents lived in these territories, now the sample does not include a single respondent who currently lives in an occupied settlement (together with this, out of a total of 984 respondents, 32 respondents lived in a settlement that is currently occupied until February 24, 2022; now these respondents live in one of the settlements on the territory controlled by the Government of Ukraine). According to our estimates, the territories that were occupied by Russia as of the beginning of September 2022 (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), as well as the fact that significant territories of Kharkiv and Kherson regions 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 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.