According to the study, the majority of Ukrainians (74%) identify themselves as Orthodox, 8% as the Greco-Roman Catholicism, 1% – as Roman Catholicism and Protestant and Evangelical churches. Just Christians consider themselves almost 9% of respondents, don’t identify themselves with any religious denominations 6%.
Regionally, in all areas of the most common is Orthodoxy, except Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk and Lviv region, where more than half respondents profess Greek-Catholicism. Also, the Greek Catholics consider themselves almost 20% of the population of Transcarpathia. Roman Catholicism is more common than in other areas in the Carpathian region (7%).
Among those who consider themselves as Orthodox, the relative majority (38%) identified themselves as Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, 20% – to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, 1% – to the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, 39% – consider themselves as just Orthodox.
To the UOC (KP) often consider themselves in the West and in the Center of Ukraine, to the UOC (MP) – in the South and Donbass. Nevertheless, even in the southern and eastern regions, except Donbass and Odessa region, there are more supporters of Kiev Patriarchate than Moscow. Thus, the farther to the south and east, the more respondents consider themselves as just Orthodox and do not consider themselves to any Orthodox jurisdiction. In particular, most of these are in Kirovograd, Mykolayiv, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhya, Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy, Odessa, Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.
The method of collecting primary data is standardized interview «face-to-face» at the residence of respondents. The sample is representative for the adult population by sex, age (older than 18 years) and the type of settlement. There were interviewed 25,000 respondents (1,000 for the area). The error of representativeness: national indicators – not more than 0.9%, for regional – 3.1%.
Dates: 1 – 17 February 2015. The survey was conducted by four companies:
- Center for Social and Marketing Research SOCIS
- Sociological group «Rating»
- Razumkov Centre
- KIIS
