The nationwide poll “Youth of Ukraine 2017” conducted by the New Europe Center and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) in cooperation with the sociological company GfK Ukraine is one of the most comprehensive attempts to understand and assess the sentiments of Ukrainian youth not only in recent years, but perhaps also for the entire period of Ukraine’s independence.
In addition to a wide range of topics covered, from family and leisure to foreign policy, this survey has both temporal and methodological peculiarities. Focusing on young people aged 14 to 29, it provides a snapshot for several generations: Generation Y, including people born in late 80’s until the early 90’s (the oldest respondents in this survey were born in 1987-1988) and Generation Z, born between the early 90s and mid-2000s.
While these generation categories are quite typical for the Western world, they acquire additional meanings in the
Ukrainian context, as they represent people of the same age as Ukrainian independence and those who are a decade younger; those who participated or witnessed two revolutions in the modern history of Ukraine (the Orange Revolution and the Revolution of Dignity) and those who were children during both events. It should be
noted that in this age range, as of January 1st, 2017, there were almost 8 million people, which makes up virtually a fifth of the entire population of Ukraine.
Methodologically, this research is part of a series of surveys conducted with the support of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) in the Balkans, South Caucasus, and Central Asia. The Ukrainian survey is the sixteenth in this series.
All of them are based on the “Shell Youth Study” methodology, conducted in Germany regularly since 1953. Accordingly, the age group of respondents is 14 to 29, and not 14 to 35, as youth is defined by the legislation of Ukraine.
This condition imposes certain limitations on possible comparisons and parallels with previous surveys of youth in Ukraine; however, it offers opportunities for valuable comparisons and generalizations between countries and regions participating in surveys based on the “Shell Youth Study” methodology.
The poll was conducted in July-August 2017. The sample consists of 2,000 respondents aged 14-29 and represented the population of Ukraine of this age group by gender, age, region of residence, and size of the settlement (excluding population of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and uncontrolled territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions). The poll was conducted via personal interviews at respondents’ homes. The theoretical error does not exceed 2.2%. In addition to the quantitative poll, four focus groups with youth aged 18-29 were conducted in Lviv, Odesa, Kharkiv, and Chernihiv in October 2017.
To download the publication click here.
