Suchergebnisse

Data on the effects of COVID-19-related social restrictions on LGBT people are scarce, and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA), which is characterized by an unstable economy, the presence of interstate conflicts and heterogeneous access of vulnerable groups to social services remain a "white spot" on the research map. The article aims to close knowledge gaps about the socioeconomic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic among men who have sex with men and transgender people in Ukraine. A cross-sectional online survey of 820 Hornet mobile app users who are male, over the age of 18, and reside in Ukraine was undertaken from March to May 2020. The analysis is based on one- and two-dimensional distributions. The chi-square test for categorical variables and comparison of means for the PHQ-4 depression and anxiety scales were used to compare the social vulnerability of various sample groups. COVID-19 significantly impacted the economic circumstances of the people surveyed: 24% lost at least two-thirds of their income, 41% lost their jobs, and 23% found themselves in extreme poverty and had to limit their food intake. Respondents who belong to socially more vulnerable populations were particularly heavily struck by the COVID-19 epidemic's societal and economic changes in 2020. However, the prevalence of suicidal ideations among respondents did not change compared to the pre-pandemic period. The average data on respondents' mental health (PHQ-4) scale is 4,9 (95% CI: 4,6–5,3), which did not exceed the bounds of mild deviations from the norm. The limitation of physical freedom, which resulted in economic losses, causing the level of depression and anxiety among suffering groups to be worsened. The findings show the negative effects of COVID-19 restrictions on LGBT physical, social, and mental well-being in Ukraine. The epidemic's harmful effects harmed the region's men who have sex with men, but more socially vulnerable categories were hardest hit. Thus, the outbreak made already existing disparities worse.

The proposed article describes the global experience of adapting the RDS (respondent-driven sample) methodology, used as a de facto standard in large-scale quantitative studies of social groups, to the world of web communications. The experience accumulated in global practice allows us to state that WebRDS is faster and cheaper, provides a greater diversity of the research population and the possibility of recruiting simultaneously at several sites without extensive contacts in local communities, works in countries with very different income levels of the population, and can be combined with traditional RDS, and other survey methods (e.g., with telephone survey). At the same time, WebRDS has its own characteristics, among which we note the vulnerability to fraud, the sensitivity of the response rate to the size of the questionnaire, the presence of biases caused by access to the Internet or mobile connection and the habit of using online tools, not always full control of the research team over the use of the collected data with the help of third-party Internet data platforms, as well as higher requirements for the technical competence of both researchers and ethics committees, etc. In Ukraine, the prerequisites for successfully implementing WebRDS have been created. Considering the challenges that have arisen due to the occupation of part of the territories and the large-scale migration of the population, it seems appropriate to adapt the available foreign experience in implementing such a recruiting system to the practice of biobehavioral research of vulnerable groups in Ukraine.

The article analyzes quantitative and qualitative data related to the activities of non-governmental organizations of Ukrainians in Estonia, including the structure of umbrella organizations, sources of funding, frequency of cultural events, their content and attendance. A comparison with the number of members of informal online associations of Ukrainians in Estonia, as well as with official demographic statistics, shows that there is significantly low coverage of the Ukrainian community by the services of Ukrainian diaspora organizations in Estonia. Based on a survey of members of informal online associations of Ukrainians in Estonia, it is shown that despite the general awareness of the goals of diaspora non-governmental organizations, primarily young immigrants with little experience in the country feel the dissonance between the activities of these non-governmental organizations and their needs, which leads to negative views on the activity of organizations of the Ukrainian diaspora in Estonia and weak involvement in the life of the local community. At the same time, the extensive network of Ukrainian diaspora organizations in the country, the availability of basic funding for those organizations from the Estonian government and material and technical support, long experience and relevance of issues related to the Ukrainian community in Estonian society, became a necessary prerequisite for a rapid and positive response of Estonian society to the significant influx of Ukrainian refugees who arrived after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation and the active mobilization of Estonian society to help war survivors.

Female partners of men who have sex with men are a poorly studied group. Secondary analysis of the Ukrainian data gave the conservative number of such women as the range 10,700 to 43,000 persons. The article presents the results of the data analysis from the women's subsample of a pilot a cross-sectional study of bisexual men and their female partners was conducted in 2013 in five Ukraine cities. 101 women were interviewed according to a standardized questionnaire, and 10 semi-structured interviews were recorded. The obtained data characterize the female partners of behaviorally bisexual men as a relatively young and mostly socially prosperous group with a completed education, having experience of cohabitation with men, as well as ready for sexual experiments and independent of the older generation. Confrontation with the bisexuality of the partner stimulates a change in perceptions of the relationship models between different genders and promotes the conscious choice of one's own family life model with sensitivity to both members of the partnership's needs. Most women interviewed characterize their relationships positively, although the stage may influence it in the relationship with the man before coming out of a bisexual and the rigidity of their own perceptions of gender roles. Limited communication with others, lack of sources of social and psychological support in crisis moments of life together may indicate socially disadapted status of heterosexual couples in which at least one partner is bisexual. This study's main limitations are the small and non-random sampling and recruitment of respondents through their husbands or regular male partners who were open in their own non-heterosexuality.

Transgender people, being stigmatized, discriminated against, abused, and having less access to social, health, and public health services appear to be a hard-to-reach group for researchers. Thus, with very few opportunities for research, especially representative ones, it is challenging to plan high-quality and effective interventions that would help overcome stigma and discrimination as well as prevent violence against this group. The methods used to recruit respondents from hard-to-reach groups to assume that less visible subgroups can be accessed through the available, more visible ones. Still, the data presented in this article indicate the incoherence of social networks of trans- and non-binary people due to the stigma and discrimination. The main empirical findings aimed to describe the instability of the social ties within a group of transgender and non-binary people, probable explanations for the causes of this instability, and the main lines of the community fragmentation. Personal traumatic experiences of transgender people and the dispersion of the community also affect its weak involvement in civic activities. The paper dwells upon a phenomenon that is argotically called "stealth": a transgender person in a particular time, having achieved the desired result in transgender transition, distances themself from the community, striving to live an everyday life in society in a new gender. Accordingly, such people lose all or most of their social ties with other transgender and/or non-binary people and are inaccessible both to the research aimed at this specific group and to various social programs. Based on the material used in this article, we can discuss the lack of a single community of transgender and non-binary people in Ukraine and the need to use this term about transgender and non-binary people in the plural, not singular, because each subgroup of trans- and non-binary people, is a separate community. At the same time, the existing forms of stable connections are described, such as public organizations, networks of fictitious kinship, etc. This article will be helpful for researchers, as well as project managers whose attention is focused on transgender and non-binary people in Ukraine.

The study (30 semi-structured interviews in 5 administrative-territorial units of Ukraine) covers men who have sex with men (MSM), middle-aged and elderly (over 35 years) to understand certain factors, which should be considered when planning new services or already those available in prevention projects. The authors tried to describe the lifestyle of middle-aged and elderly MSM as a power for mature individuals. The article describes that one of the main factors influencing the involvement of this socio-demographic group in the activities of HIV service organizations is the competition of the proposed services with other leisure activities, and the concept of services must meet the needs of potential clients (in the field of health, relationships with partners and their hobbies), daily life schedule and the use of ways to communicate with other members of the LGBT community. MSM and LGBT organisations should create a safe physical and psychological environment, advise on ageing, divorce, introduce safer models of living in stressful situations, support and shape behaviours aimed at maintaining health, forming a healthy lifestyle, and improving its quality both in the context of socialisation of clients, and preservation or restoration of sexual attractiveness and activity. Clients should be able to choose the services that best suit their needs from a wide range (including for same- and heterosexual couples) and how to receive services (with or without a visit to the organisation's office). The organization of services should create a recognizable face of each organisation within the city or region and not offer the same set of services). The study has some limitations, mainly the impossibility of generalising the information obtained to the entire study population due to the purely qualitative nature of the applied methodology. The study group (MSM aged 35 years and older) consists of several distinct age groups, among which the oldest group had additional trauma in the past.