The much-vaunted resilience of Ukrainians in the face of war adversity is not just a perception, but is actually real and measurable and has a human face, according to sociological experts.

According to the results of the experts’ survey, the profile of the most resilient Ukrainian woman is “Vera”, a woman aged 25-36 with a university degree, who is an internally displaced person of the country (PDI) and who is linked to a soldier. On the other hand, the least resilient type of Ukrainian is probably an older man with a low level of education.

Vox Ukraina, an independent research and analytics platform, conducted a resilience survey among 2,662 Ukrainian respondents from 12 communities across seven oblasts. The results were published this week.

“Resilience has specific elements that can determine a society’s future responses to shocks…(Understanding them) provides the opportunity to prepare for future shocks and war crises,” researchers Valentyn Hatsko and Andriy Darkovych, both affiliated with the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), said.

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

• The strength of community leadership;
• The desire of leaders to listen to residents;
• Similar views of other community members;
• The rate of positive change in a community;
• The pride of community members in their community;
• The extent to which community members help each other;
• The impact of the community environment on a person’s health;
• The openness of a community to new ideas;
• The degree to which a community is physically or otherwise isolated.

For each component, each participant responded on a scale of zero to four, with zero representing “very poor” and four representing “very good.”

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When it comes to the factors that most determine resilience, Ukrainians consider their communities to be open to new ideas and well integrated with other communities.

Conversely, when it comes to the factors that most degrade resilience, Ukrainians doubted the strength of community leadership and their leaders’ willingness to listen, particularly in the context of reforms that decentralized decision-making. decision in Ukraine.

In demographic terms, certain groups in society have proven to be the most resilient compared to other groups. These were: 1) internally displaced persons (IDPs); 2) people with a veteran in their family; and 3) people with higher education.

The survey found: that women are more resilient than men overall; that 26 to 35 year olds are the most resilient of all age categories; and that people with lower incomes are more resilient than those with higher incomes.

“(Certain) social groups have a worse resilience score; Some components of societal resilience are the most problematic, and this may affect respondents’ trust in local authorities, which is one of the most important elements of a successful response to war shocks,” they said. the researchers.

As a result, the least resilient groups in society compared to other groups were: 1) people with lower levels of education and 2) older people.

Members of communities located in Ukraine’s active war zone are more resilient and comparatively more engaged with their community leaders.

“(It is possible) that the feeling of threat mobilizes residents and creates a greater feeling of cohesion with local authorities. At the same time, the effectiveness of local authorities’ response to crises has a greater impact on their support for communities in war zones,” the researchers commented.

Based on 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 their residents, as well as increase transparency and citizen participation in decision-making processes,” the researchers said.