Announcement of issue No. 4 of the journal “Sociology: Theory, Methods, Marketing” (2024)

The following articles will be published in issue No. 4 of the journal:

Valerii Heiets

Economic socialisation on the path towards the solidary construction of reality

The article examines how, amid the ever deepening global contradiction between the dynamics and structure of economic growth on the one hand and the threat of climate change on the other, the post-war development of Ukraine's economy can be secured by building a social foundation on the basis of economic socialisation. One of the key resources of social renewal is helping to reduce society's level of stress and to secure social solidarity by widening the possibilities for the population's inclusion in civic life and in the economy, in particular through effective employment. Employment is here regarded as a response to the challenge of the times, defined on the basis of an assessment of tendencies towards a reappraisal of values and a desire to begin a “new life” among the broad masses of the population affected by the war. The possibility of securing employment is connected with the processes of constructing a new reality in wartime and, especially, in the post-war period, in which the active solidarity of the population on the basis of economic socialisation becomes possible. Alongside this, economic socialisation is regarded as a component of state employment policy that should create the preconditions for individuals to become aware of, reconsider and change their own economic behaviour, above all on the labour market.

Serhii Dembitskyi, Viktor Stepanenko, Olena Zlobina, Yevhen Golovakha, Liubov Naidonova

Psychological stressors of wartime: prevalence and effects among the population of Ukraine

The article is devoted to the effect of various wartime stressors on the psychological state of Ukraine's population. That state is analysed through indicators of psychological distress.

The article reviews the stressors identified in previous research focused on war. On this basis it proposes the authors' own list of stressors (28 in all) that Ukraine's population faces under war conditions. Testing the proposed stressors in empirical research made it possible to distinguish 12 more general groups of stressors: 1) the experience of being in dangerous situations; 2) insufficiency of social (in the broad sense) services; 3) problems connected with moving permanently to a new place of residence; 4) material difficulties; 5) leaving home for a long time and separation from loved ones; 6) discrimination, insufficient support from those close to one, and moral dilemmas; 7) conflicts with loved ones and with those around one provoked by the war; 8) health problems — one's own and those of loved ones; 9) the threat to one's own life and the lives of loved ones as a probability; 10) mass negative effects (media reports and problems with the utilities in one's home); 11) traumatic memories, including the experience of mass panic; 12) responsibility for others.

By means of a generalised analytical model (multiple regression was used to construct it: F = 34.8; df = 14; p-value < 0.001; R2 = 14.6%), seven specific stressors were identified as having the greatest effect on respondents' level of psychological distress: 1) insufficient support from those close to one despite needing it; 2) having, because of difficult circumstances, to do things one does not approve of; 3) discrimination because of belonging to a particular social group; 4) recalling stressful experiences from the past and the corresponding negative feelings; 5) significant financial or material losses; 6) health problems faced by those close to one; 7) distress at what is heard and seen in the media (radio, television, the internet).

Olena Zlobina

Resources of psychological resilience in countering the stressors of war

Numerous sociological studies have recorded a broadly stable psycho-emotional state of the population since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, despite the constant negative pressure of existential threats. An analysis of the theoretical literature on the psychological resources for countering stressors revealed a variety of possible decisions about which resources to include in the analysis. It was decided to focus on those resources whose role is considered key regardless of the theoretical positions researchers hold. We accordingly concentrated on determining the role of optimism, operationalised as positive expectations about the future; of self-efficacy, understood in a broad sense as the ability to control a situation; and of emotional stability, understood as the ability to control emotional reactions to an adverse situation. The following were confirmed: 1 — the role of optimism and self-efficacy as key psychological resources helping to maintain the stability of the population's psychological state under the prolonged pressure of wartime stressors; 2 — the link between psychological resilience and high practical activity and intensive involvement in social ties; 3 — the leading role of self-efficacy in reducing the salience of the negative effect of stressors in risk groups (women and young people); 4 — the importance of emotional stability as a predictor for stressors connected with panic, conflicts and distress at what is heard and seen in the media.

Danyil Karakai, Ruslana Moskotina

Religious involvement over time: assessing the measurement invariance of the Religious Involvement scale in Ukraine

This study examines the measurement invariance of the Religious Involvement (RI) scale in Ukraine. Using data from the European Social Survey (ESS) and from a nationwide survey conducted immediately before the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, the authors offer a detailed analysis of the scale in the Ukrainian context.

Previous research using multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) aimed at comparing countries but did not focus on analysing the dynamics of religiosity in Ukraine, especially after the Revolution of Dignity.

The authors used MGCFA to test the invariance of the Religious Involvement scale across all ESS waves in which Ukraine took part, and for the 2022 survey. They establish that metric invariance of the scale across all surveys is not confirmed. In addition, the surveys conducted in 2004 and after 2014 had somewhat different patterns of correlation between the scale's components compared with the other ESS waves. The authors suggest that political dynamics affected the social aspects of religiosity in Ukraine, and that it is therefore important to take the political context into account when assessing religious involvement.

Olena Denysevych

Religion as a coping strategy for Ukrainians at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022

Living through the difficulties connected with war demands considerable emotional and spiritual effort. In order to identify the strategies that help Ukrainians hold on during severe trials, interviews were conducted in April and May 2022 with 31 respondents from various regions of Ukraine and with people displaced within Ukraine and abroad. This article identifies the religious coping strategy as one that helps in the struggle with the challenges to life caused by the war. The study illuminates, in particular, the spiritual experience of Ukraine's Roman Catholic community.

How did Ukrainians use religion to cope with the fear and trauma of war? Religious coping mechanisms involve, on the one hand, physical actions such as evening prayer within the family and attending church services and, on the other, metaphysical ones — communicating with God in everyday life or “leaving everything to God's will”. The study shows how some Ukrainians, feeling the fear and trauma of war, turned to religion both in the traditional, spiritual sense and in a broader one — as a source of hope, of faith in a better future, in victory and in the power of good.

Svitlana Shevchenko

Ukrainian war migrants in Poland: the lives of adolescents and their mothers

The article describes the methodology and results of the author's qualitative study of Ukrainian war migrants in Poland two years after the beginning of the full-scale war. The target group: adolescents aged 14–18 and their mothers who left for Poland after the invasion and now live in Warsaw. Using face-to-face semi-structured in-depth interviews (N = 25), 12 families were analysed (12 mothers and 13 of their adolescent children). The study was conducted in January–March 2024. Its main limitation is a bias towards more secure families, since it was difficult to recruit those in a difficult life situation and/or with very traumatic experience. The interview scripts for women and adolescents were basically the same, except that the topic of “work” in conversations with the women was replaced by the topic of “study” in conversations with the adolescents. The study made it possible to supplement the existing data and improve our understanding of the life path of Ukrainian war migrants in Poland. After two years, practically all the women's social circles remain Ukrainian, their social ties with Poles are weak and integration is practically not taking place. Among the adolescents, by contrast, integration through education is proceeding more successfully and they manage to establish social ties with Polish peers (except for those planning to return to Ukraine in the near future). Intentions about returning, and social expectations, differ greatly between the women and the adolescents. The factors facilitating adaptation and the barriers to it also proved to be different.

Nazar Lisovyi

The use of scaling techniques and multivariate analysis to assess the pressure of sociocultural norms of masculinity on the psychosocial well-being of male students (on the example of a sample from NaUKMA)

The study, conducted in Kyiv in the spring of 2024, set out to examine the content of and to measure the complex effect of the sociocultural norms connected with the construct of masculinity on the psychosocial well-being of young men, using the example of a sample of male students of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (N = 215). Using scaling techniques and multivariate analysis, a formalised instrument was developed that makes it possible to assess the degree of consensus around various norms of masculinity and to study their relationships with respondents' psychological well-being. The results show that a stronger presence of traits marked as masculine is a predictor of higher subjective well-being, a stronger sense of social belonging, a more positive outlook and a more constructive perception of life events. It is important to contextualise masculinity within a society's cultural and value networks. In particular, congruence with culturally desirable socially normative images may foster a sense of responsibility, an understanding of one's own role in society and the development of resolve.

The round table “The solidarisation of Ukrainian society in war and the prospects for preserving solidary social potential”

The discussion, organised by the Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine, was held on 19 November 2024 as part of the research work under the competitive programme of the NAS of Ukraine “Sociological studies of the potential of solidary social interactions” within the targeted interdisciplinary research project “The solidarisation of Ukrainian society in war and the prospects for preserving and reproducing solidary social potential in the country's post-war development”. Taking part in the discussion were V. Stepanenko (moderator), Ye. Golovakha, S. Dembitskyi, O. Zlobina, M. Parashchevin, V. Reznik, O. Reznik, O. Symonchuk, V. Smakota, N. Soboleva and H. Chepurko.