Methodology

For this Situation Update, Ipsos Ukraine surveyed 1,750 randomly selected Ukrainian adults residing in the unoccupied territory of Ukraine between 14 November and 16 December 2023 over the telephone, using random digit dialling methodology. The survey did not cover territories under Russian occupation at the time of data collection, including Crimea and parts of the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia regions, thus excluding areas where nearly 20 per cent of the pre-war population lived. While the estimates based on this sample facilitate a deeper understanding of the war’s effects on the Ukrainian people, the Small Arms Survey acknowledges the risk of bias, which, apart from the inability to cover Russian-controlled territories where Ukrainian phone numbers do not work, is also due to the temporary absence of a large part of the population who are currently refugees outside of Ukraine. Ipsos Ukraine also carried out our previous surveys in December 2022–January 2023 (referred to as ‘January 2023’ in this Update) and August–September 2023 (referred to as ‘September 2023’ in this Update), and used a similar methodology. These surveys included 2,000 and 1,750 respondents, respectively.^[1]

The 2019 survey data was obtained through the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology’s nationally representative telephone omnibus survey, with 2,021 respondents—at that time, only Crimea and the occupied parts of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts were not covered (Small Arms Survey, 2019). The detailed methodology for the World Values Survey can be accessed in Inglehart et al. (2014)—this survey interviewed a representative sample of 1,500 Ukrainians in 2011 and was able to cover the whole country within its internationally recognized borders.

It is important to maintain a degree of caution regarding the credibility of survey respondents’ reporting, particularly concerning firearms possession. This is true even in the Ukrainian context, where civilian firearms possession has become fairly normalized. Despite this, some people might still feel uncomfortable discussing these issues openly, leading to a risk of under-reporting and, consequently, latency.

^[1] See ‘Notes on the study’ in Hideg and Watson (2023).