The War in Ukraine in the Perception of the Russian Population (Public Opinion Polls by the Levada Center)
Random-sample questionnaire-based nationally representative polls conducted as omnibus surveys March – December 2022
Version 1.1, published: Jan. 25, 2023.
Open Access
22
Note: A newer version of this dataset has been published Version 1.2
Description
The Levada Center has been conducting omnibus surveys of the Russian population on a regular basis. This data collection includes questions about the full-scale Russian military aggression against Ukraine which started on 24 February 2022 together with standard socio-demographic and political data about all respondents. It contains the raw data from 10 opinion polls conducted from March to December 2022.
Included in this data collection are the relevant questions from the Levada omnibus surveys copied into one file. The SPSS file (.sav) is the original file provided by the Levada Center. It has been exported into an Excel file. The content of the respective xlsx-file should be identical with the original sav-file.
The documentation of data collection lists the questions included in the dataset and provides information about the random-sample questionnaire-based nationally representative polls conducted as omnibus surveys. The original data file is in Russian, but the documentation lists all questions and answer options with an English translation.
Additionally, the data collection contains (1) an excerpt from a working paper published by Denis Volkov, the director of the Levada Center, and Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which outlines their arguments against a reduced validity of Levada surveys. (2) a file detailing the response and rejections rates of the Levada omnibus surveys conducted in the first quarter of 2022 with a discussion by the Levada team and (3) a description of an experiment conducted by the Leveda Center to analyse the readiness of the Russian population to participate in surveys (available only in Russian language).
Compared to the previous version the results for July to December have been added, this includes 2 additional questions not asked in the earlier polls.
The data presented in this dataset have been compiled by the Levada Center. The dataset has been provided to the Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen for open access publication (non-commercial use) on the DiscussData-platform. The documentation of data collection has been compiled by Heiko Pleines (Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen), who is also responsible for the upload of this data collection to the DiscussData-platform.