Young, Female, Educated and Internally Displaced

According to sociological experts, Ukrainians’ much-vaunted resilience in the face of wartime hardship is not just a perception but actually has a real, measurable and human face.

According to experts’ survey findings, the profile of the most resilient type of Ukrainian is “Vera”, an Internally Displaced Person (IDP) and a university-educated woman aged 25-36. soldier. On the other hand, the least resistant type of Ukrainian is most likely a less educated older man.

Vox Ukraina, an independent research and analysis platform, conducted a research survey on resilience with 2,662 Ukrainian respondents from 12 communities across seven regions. The results were announced this week.

“Resilience has certain components that can determine the future responses of a society to shocks… (Understanding these) provides the opportunity to prepare for future wartime shocks and crises,” said Valentyn Hatsko and Andriy Darkovych, researchers affiliated with the Kiev School of Economics ( KSE ).

Based on methodologies developed by KSE, the researchers’ survey measured participants’ responses to 12 key components of community resilience, including:

• The strength of a community’s leadership;
• Leaders’ willingness to listen to residents;
• Similar thoughts from other community members;
• The rate of positive change in a community;
• The pride community members feel in their community;
• The degree to which community members help each other;
• The impact of society’s environment on a person’s health;
• A community’s openness to new ideas;
• The degree to which a community is physically or otherwise isolated.

For each component, each participant responded on a scale from zero to four; zero represented “very poor” and four represented “very good.”

In terms of the factors that most determine resilience, Ukrainians think their communities are open to new ideas and well integrated with other communities.

Conversely, in terms of the factors that most diminished resilience, Ukrainians doubted the strength of their community leadership and their leaders’ willingness to listen; This was especially the case in the context of reforms that decentralized decision-making in Ukraine.

From a demographic perspective, some groups of society were found to be the most resilient compared to other groups. These are: 1) internally displaced persons (IDPs); 2) people with veterans in their family; and 3) highly educated individuals.

The survey found that: Women are generally more resilient than men; Those between the ages of 26 and 35 are the most resilient among all age categories; and that low-income people are more resilient than high-income people.

“(Some) social groups have worse resilience scores; Some components of community resilience are the most problematic, which may impact participants’ trust in local authorities as one of the most important elements of a successful response to war shocks,” the researchers said.

Accordingly, the least resilient groups of society compared to other groups were: 1) those with low education levels and 2) the elderly.

Members of communities in Ukraine’s active war zone are more resilient and relatively more engaged with their community leadership.

“(It’s possible) that the sense of threat will mobilize residents and create a greater sense of alignment with local governments.” “At the same time, the effectiveness of local authorities’ response to crises has a greater impact on their support for war zone communities,” the researchers commented.

In terms of their findings, the researchers believe it is important to increase trust between community leaders and residents.

“(To increase resilience), it is necessary to strengthen communication between community leaders and residents, as well as increase transparency and citizen participation in decision-making processes,” the researchers said.