Journalist Denys Kazansky, Advisor to the NSDC Secretary on reintegration and restoration of Donbass Serhiy Syvokho and Deputy Director of the Info Sapiens research agency Inna Volosevych have questioned the results of opinion poll in the so-called "DNR" and "LNR", conducted by the Kharkiv-based New Image Marketing Group company.
Denys Kazansky considers the story of the opinion poll in CADLO to be "quite strange".
"Quite a strange story was with the opinion poll in CADLO. The survey was conducted by a certain Kharkiv company, New Image Marketing Group. It literally says: "international organizations and institutions use services of the dedicated team that travels to the DNR and LNR to conduct a sociological field for more than a year". I began to be overly concerned here about the international organizations, because according to a number of studies, the New Image Marketing Group company is banal scammers, who have been engaged in fraud for about ten years and have been publishing paid-for polls", - Kazansky writes on his Facebook.
According to him, back in 2009, New Image Marketing Group "openly worked for Lytvyn and published a fantastic sociology in which they prophesied him access to the second round of the presidential election".
"As a result, as we recall, Lytvyn took only 7th place with an insignificant result", - Denys Kazansky wrote.
The journalist recalls polls of this company during the 2012 parliamentary election, when New Image Marketing Group predicted the passage of Natalia Korolevska to the parliament.
"In 2012, the same shady enterprise was caught in paid-for polls in favor of the Korolevska party, to which they drew as much as 6% of the votes. The party gained about 1.6% in the election. It also appeared in other manipulations, which is quite easy to find in search engines. This shady enterprise is well known and has a bad name, whole articles have been devoted to it", - Denys Kazansky confirms.
In his opinion, it is not worth believing the results of the research conducted by the mentioned Kharkiv company.
"Even if you imagine that this shady enterprise did conduct some kind of polls, its name is already so discredited that any results will cause distrust and skepticism by definition", - Kazansky believes.
Advisor to the NSDC Secretary on Donbass reintegration and restoration Serhiy Syvokho also questions the results of the survey in CADLO, suggesting that "the survey was conducted remotely or with the consent of the LDNR authorities and was edited". Syvokho wrote this on his Facebook.
"Everyone in the loop knows that it is impossible to interview 1600 respondents face-to-face on a structured questionnaire in households without communication with the "Ministry of State Security" of the unrecognized republics. Accordingly, either this survey was conducted remotely, which belittles its significance, or it was agreed with the authorities by the so-called "LDNR", which means it was edited in the right way", - Serhiy Syvokho considers.
In his opinion, the study appeared immediately after the Voice party's statement that Ukraine should withdraw from the Minsk process and freeze the situation in the uncontrolled territories.
"It is obvious that someone really does not want peace and return of Ukrainian territories. In the case of leaving the Minsk process, only Russia will win, which will be able to finally get rid of sanctions and continue to be actively "engaged" in the "territories abandoned by Ukraine", - Syvokho noted.
According to deputy director of the Info Sapiens research agency Inna Volosevych, there is no "dedicated team traveling to the DNR and LNR to conduct a sociological field", as New Image Marketing Group confirms.
Inna Volosevych writes this on her Facebook.
"Such a team could exist only in prison. The surveys are conducted by the local ones - please confirm or deny", - the sociologist believes.
According to Inna Volosevych, the disadvantage of any surveys in CADLO is lack of data on the general population, there are only estimates.
Another disadvantage of polls via the personal interview method in CADLO is that such surveys can only be carried out by organizations accredited by the local authorities, so the respondents are very likely to think that the survey was ordered by local or Russian authorities.
"Add the fact of recording the respondent's address and name for monitoring and draw conclusions yourself about the sincerity of the respondents. Also, part of the territory is not accessible to interviewers due to military operations," - Volosevych believes.
According to her, the statement of New Image Marketing Group that the opinion poll was conducted in CADLO for the first time does not correspond to reality.
"Since 2014, GfK, and since 2019, Info Sapiens has been conducting a survey in CADLO using the method of calling to mobile phones - I will notice here that this method also shows quite poor results in the context of relations to Ukraine, but at the same time, this method shows a significantly larger share of pro-Ukrainian respondents.This method provides high degree of anonymity - only the respondent's number is recorded without a name and address. Despite the fact that people in CADLO really want to join Russia, the majority also consider it acceptable to join Ukraine without special status in decentralization. That is, they are already ready for any solution to the current situation. At the same time, telephone interviews are also not a standard of reliability under the existing conditions - the respondents are afraid to answer by telephone", - Inna Volosevych writes.
In her opinion, surveys in CADLO should be conducted, since data on the "cut off part of the population must be collected", but the results should be taken with great care and the data of political issues should not be published, because they are "not reliable enough and are widely used for propaganda".
Let us recall that Dzerkalo Tyzhnia published the results of sociological survey of the aforementioned New Image Marketing Group at the weekend. The survey was conducted from October 7 to October 31. It was stated that 1606 respondents were interviewed via the face-to-face method: 800 in the uncontrolled part of Luhansk and 806 in the uncontrolled part of Donetsk oblasts.
According to the survey, only 5.1% of local residents want the return of the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts to Ukraine under the same conditions, while 76% of the CADLO residents consider the war in the Donbass "an internal Ukrainian conflict".