During 2007-2009, KIIS was one of the partners of the Promoting Active Citizen Engagement in Combating Corruption in Ukraine (ACTION) project implemented for the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Threshold Country Program for Ukraine under financial support of USAID.

In the frameworks of the project KIIS has developed methodology for a large-scale nationwide household survey with the following peculiarities:

• sample size (n>10,000), which allows to study not only people’s perception of the corruption but also their actual experience with it;
• sample design (n=400 per oblast), developed in such a way that it provides an opportunity to analyze data not only for Ukraine as a whole, but also at the level of each separate oblast and Kyiv city;
• comparable methodology and instruments, allowing to track changes in people’s perception and experience of corruption which took place during years of monitoring.

The goal of the studies was to trace dynamics of the attitudes of the adult population in Ukraine towards the problem of corruption; citizen experiences with corruption; citizen assessments of the effectiveness of anticorruption measures taken by authorities and other anticorruption actors; and the public’s willingness to engage in anticorruption activities. Survey sample is representative for adult population (18+) of Ukraine as a whole and for each separate oblast of Ukraine covered by the survey.

The baseline survey was conducted in 2007 and a follow up survey was conducted in 2009.

Later, the survey has been repeated under support of USAID-funded projects UNITER (2011, 2015) and ENGAGE (2018, 2021, 2023, and 2024). Each survey round covered over 10,000 respondents and employed comparable instrument and methodology.

In 2023 and 2024, during a full-scale war, the main survey of 10,000 respondents among the general population covered 18/20 regions of Ukraine. In addition, 1,000 IDPs in the same regions and 2,000 of shelter seekers abroad were interviewed (using remote methods – online, messengers, etc.).

From September 30 to October 13, 2023, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) conducted an all-Ukrainian public opinion survey "Omnibus", which included questions about top problems (except war) and who should make efforts to fight corruption. Bythemethodofcomputer-assistedtelephoneinterviews(CATI) based on a random sample of mobile phone numbers (with random generation of phone numbers and subsequent statistical weighting), 2,007 respondents living in all regions of Ukraine (except the 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). Residents of temporarily occupied territories could not be included in the sample, and the survey was not conducted with citizens abroad.

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 2.4% for indicators close to 50%, 2.1% for indicators close to 25%, 1.5% - for indicators close to 10%, 1.1% - for indicators close to 5%.

Under conditions of war, in addition to the specified formal error, a certain systematic deviation is added. However, despite certain factors that may affect the quality of the results in "wartime" conditions, in general, we believe that the obtained results still retain a high degree of representativeness and allow a fairly reliable analysis of the public mood of the population.

From September 29 to October 9, 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), 1,010 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 Ukrainian authorities 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 abroad.

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 1,010 respondents, 22 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, which were cited by KIIS earlier.

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

The survey was conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) on the order of the Program for the Promotion of Public Activity "Join!" in cooperation with the USAID Project "Supporting organizations-leaders in combating corruption in Ukraine "VzaiemoDiia" (SACCI). For the first time since 2007, KIIS surveyed three different population samples: 1) Ukrainians who did not change their place of residence after the full-scale invasion of Russia (general population); 2) internally displaced Ukrainians (IDPs); 3) externally displaced Ukrainians (EDPs).

Link to the Ukrainian version of the press release.

Link to the English version of the  press release.

80.3% of responses to the question "Why do you think ordinary citizens might not want to pay taxes?" the option "Due to low incomes that do not allow to ensure a decent standard of living" was chosen (several options could be chosen).