An academician interviews a corresponding member

An interview with the Deputy Director of the Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine, head of the sociological monitoring survey “Ukrainian Society” since 2020, Doctor of Sociological Sciences, Corresponding Member of the NAS of Ukraine Serhii Dembitskyi has been published on the YouTube channel of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. The presenter of the programme “About Science. Competently”, Academician of the NAS of Ukraine Volodymyr Semynozhenko, having described the Institute as the country's leading research institution in the field of sociology and congratulated his guest on his recent election as a Corresponding Member of the NAS of Ukraine, asked Dembitskyi, the author of a study of physical health as a personal value and of a number of others, to present his own line of work in sociology to viewers.

Recalling the beginning of his research career, the guest said that he had come to the Institute intending to work in empirical sociology. Remembering with gratitude Natalia Viktorivna Panina and Yevhen Ivanovych Golovakha as his academic teachers, Dembitskyi noted that to this day he works in the directions they established in Ukrainian sociology — namely the development of measurement instruments and the problems of political culture and individual well-being.

Serhii separately noted the importance of popularising research findings, which have made and continue to make leading sociologists opinion leaders, naming Iryna Bekeshkina, Yevhen Golovakha, Oleksandr Shulha (Doctor of Sociological Sciences, currently serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine) and others.

Characterising his conception of individual values, the sociologist stressed that of the 13 values he distinguishes, he has studied the question of physical health in the greatest detail; three studies funded by the NAS of Ukraine were devoted to it — an online panel survey, one on states of stress, and a series of personal interviews in which respondents identified 9 themes within physical health. Values, the Corresponding Member of the NAS of Ukraine stressed, are an appeal to meaning, and people's meanings differ greatly — which is how these 9 themes arose.

The interlocutors also touched on themes connected with the war. In particular on Ukrainians' ability to adapt to difficult circumstances and to keep indicators of psychological distress under control, even in territories close to the front line. People are under the effect of stressors, but it is premature to speak of mass exhaustion, since that, as research shows, does not correspond to reality.

The presenter, Academician Semynozhenko, responded actively to what his guest said, asked serious questions and made it evident that he strongly supports both his guest's specific studies and the research of Ukraine's academic sociologists.

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