Keywords

1 Introduction

2 Theoretical Context

2.1 War Migration from Ukraine in Poland

Migration makes it necessary to adapt to a new social environment and at the same time to maintain distance communication with those who remained in the previous place of residence, for this migrants use various technologies to mediate communication. The wave of mass migration from Ukraine as a result of the war and the military aggression of the Russian Federation became a necessary means of preserving life. As of mid-September, according to the UNHCR [10], more than 7 million temporarily displaced persons from Ukraine are in European countries, 1.3 million of them are in Poland. Since the beginning of the full-scale offensive, more than 6 million people have crossed the border from Ukraine to Poland. Distant communication for work and private conversation became an important part of the Ukrainian migrant community in Poland. As communication is needed for mental health, research on the copresence effect in communication is actual, but for these purposes, Ukrainian language methods must be developed and adapted.

Fig. 1.
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Mediated communication (photo by Julia M. Cameron; pixels.com)

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2.2 Copresence

Copresence has become a popular research topic in recent years, especially after the COVID-19 outbreak which forced millions of people to stay in isolation for many days or weeks. The term “copresence” was suggested to mark the quality of a communication medium in human-human or human-machine interaction [7] and is defined as the degree of person-to-person awareness which occurs in the computer environment [9]. Our previous study [8] has proved a relationship between the amount of interpersonal communication, housing conditions (a shared or private room, number of children and adults in the household), and copresence with mental well-being in confinement during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Here, we present the validation of the Copresence scale [8] to Ukrainian language, which was used in a study that aimed to replicate these results in another special context of forced disrupted social relations, this time due to migration forced by war. This “war migration situation” has put millions of migrants in new housing conditions, at a distance from their work and relatives, and in emotional positive and negative contacts. Here we describe a study carried out from May to September 2022 in Poland, in which we aimed to validate the Ukrainian version of the copresence measurement instrument.

2.3 Mediated Communication and War Migration

Chen’s study of the role of internet communication in migrant adaptation shows that immigrants who remotely communicate online more frequently with relatives and friends in their original country are less adaptive in terms of sociocultural adaptation. However, communicating with relatives and friends in the original country is no longer a significant predictor of intercultural adaptation when introducing demographic characteristics into the regression analyses: no significant impact is identified for online communication with fellow immigrants on intercultural adaptation [3]. Copresence may be important to overcome the isolation of people using VR technology as it was approved for anxiety disorder [6]. Migrants experience “co-presence” with their loved ones through social media. Among second-generation Turkish-Dutch migrants who grew up in the Netherlands and migrated to Istanbul in adulthood [1] are in two different models of communication: ambient, fast-paced, background communications and also more direct, immersive, conversational modes. The careful shifting between these modes of social media communication produces migrants’ experiences of transnational emotional intimacy when emotion is mediated through digital media and gives psychological support to migrants. During the war and migration of Ukrainian family members, distant communication is the factor that influences the moral and psychological state of the combatant when family problems impact the psychological state of the service members during deployment in active military zones of anti-terrorist operations [4, 5].

3 Method

3.1 Sample and Data Collection

The study was carried out online in the form of a self-report questionnaire. Data were collected from May to September 2022 among Ukrainian adult migrants. The study obtained approval from the ethics committee of the Institute of Psychology at the Polish Academy of Sciences. Participation in the study was completely anonymous and voluntary. 221 Ukrainian migrants participated in the study (195 participants had valid data in both private and work-related conditions; 196 and 219 respectively), and the majority of them were women (72%). 78% of migrant participants entered Poland after the 24th of February 2022, after the Russian military invasion of Ukraine. One person did not want to reveal their gender, and three persons were nonbinary. 56 people were interviewed face-to-face and others via the internet through various platforms and social media groups to reach as heterogeneous groups of potential participants as possible. The average age was 38 (SD = 13, min = 20, max = 72) for Ukrainian women and 31 (SD = 13, min = 18, max = 71) for UA men. Ukrainian participants lived before migration in a city (48%), 34% in a town, and 16% in a village; after migration 85% in a city, 12% in a town, and 3% in a village. Since the study was carried out online mainly among volunteers, it was impossible to avoid the selection bias completely.

3.2 Measures

Copresence. We used the Polish adaptation of the Social Presence Survey from Bailenson, Blascovich, Beall, and Loomis [2] in a variant by Swidrak, Pochwatko, Matejuk [8] for co-presence measurement. Participants filled the scale twice, separately for work-related (variable copresence-work) and private (copresence-priv) communication. Participants responded on a Likert scale from 1 (I strongly disagree) to 5 (I strongly agree). The score of each variable was calculated by extracting the mean of all items. The Ukrainian version of the Perceived Copresence Scale (PCS-U) was developed by 3-steps translation of instruments procedures. First, the original Polish PCS was translated into Ukrainian by two professionals (a psychologist, and a software developer) from outside the research team, both of whom were bilingual and fluent in Ukrainian and Polish. Next, the two translations were compared, and discrepancies were reconciled until one working draft in Ukrainian was achieved. Second, a bilingual expert panel consisting of two original translators and two science researchers reviewed the draft Ukrainian translation to make cultural adaptations as necessary. Third, the corrected Ukrainian scale was back-translated into Polish by one bilingual translator. The back-translated Polish version was then compared to the original Polish version and reviewed by the original author to ensure that the questions were translated correctly and a cultural and language equivalency was reached.

Housing Conditions. We controlled whether the participant lived alone or with others by asking about the number of adults, children, and small children living in the same household. In analyses we used two variables: the number of adults living with the participant (variable cohab-adult) and the total number of children (variable cohab-kids). We also inquired whether participants had their own room or had to share it (variable ownroom, 0 - no, 1 - yes). Communication conditions were: the number of hours spent at work on mediated communication (h-work), the quantity of video-calls (video-work), and the speed of the internet connection (internet-speed).

Hours of Private Calls and Hours of Work-Related Calls. To measure the quantity of mediated communication, we asked participants to estimate the number of hours they spend daily on private and work-related communication using: a virtual reality head-mounted display, a computer, and a tablet/smartphone. In the next step, we summed the hours separately for work-related and private calls (variables h-work and h-priv).

Internet and Electronic Devices. The Internet connection speed was measured with a single-choice question: My internet connection is (1) slow, (2) average, (3) fast, (4) very fast (variable: internet speed). We also asked about the percentage of calls in both contexts being video calls (variables: video-priv and video-work).

3.3 Data Analysis

Data analysis was carried out in SPSS version 28. We have used descriptive statistics to analyse the demographic data and housing conditions, a principal component analysis (PCA) to test the factorial structure of the Ukrainian Perceived Copresence Scale; and calculated the Cronbach’s alpha to measure its reliability. We took an explorative approach, following Gellman and Hill [2]. To test the external validity of the scale, we calculated the correlation between the number of hours spent on work-related and private video calls.

Table 1. Means and standard deviations of co-presence.
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4 Results

4.1 Descriptive Statistics

Housing Conditions and Internet Usage. Housing conditions of Ukrainian migrants differed: 30% of them were working in an office and going to work each day, only 8% worked remotely and 10% worked in a hybrid form (partly remote and partly personally); 22% were students of various levels and forms of learning, 34% were temporarily unemployed, home caregivers or pensioners. Only one in ten respondents lived alone and 28% had own room; 24% lived with a partner, 38% lived with two or three people. Regarding the cohabitants, two thirds of participants lived with children, 21% with small children, 41% with one child. Majority of migrant participants (74%) had mobile/phone internet connection, only 4.5% used a cable internet connection, and 2.3% had the optical fibre connection. Only 1.5% of respondents declared no internet at home. Overall, the vast majority have a fast or rather fast connection (8% very fast, 44% fast, 38% average/medium), with only 9,5% declaring slow connection. Reliability of internet connection was rated as relatively low with half of the sample responding that it was sometimes interrupted, and was slowing down; 38% that it was often interrupted.

4.2 Validation of the Ukrainian Perceived Copresence Scale (PCS-U)

The PCA was used to verify the factor structure of the Ukrainian scale. Bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant (\(\chi ^2\) = 1219 p <.001) and the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test score was .84. The PCA revealed one factor for the Ukrainian version, explaining 67% of the variance. Reliability analysis revealed very high level of internal consistency of PCS-U (Cronbach’s alpha =.928, valid cases N=195). The correlation between copresence and the number of hours spent on work-related and private video calls was .174 (p<.05) and .289 (p<.001) respectively (Table 2).

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Perceived Copresence Factor Analysis: scree plot.

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Table 2. Perceived Copresence Component Score Coefficient Matrix
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5 Discussion

The first result of the study is the validation of the Ukrainian Perceived Copresence Scale (PCS-U) as a one-factor measurement instrument with appropriate internal consistency. This gives reason to think about the life situation of migration as one that changes the conditions of work and personal interactions and reduces the feeling of copresence in remote communication, at least during the adaptation period. It means that copresence plays different functions during work and private communications in conditions of war migration; its pattern analysis is the task of the next study. We need to research copresence in private and work communication during the collective trauma healing process. Types of trauma events and the character of conversations about events and emotional stress may be independent variances for future research. Mass migration during the war changed the importance of having a proper physical workspace isolated from other cohabitants to participate in work-related calls efficiently. Copresence in the context of post-war society transformation, peacebuilding, and construction of historical remembering by war migrants, is an important subject for future research for a deeper understanding of copresence. There are several limitations to the study, such as not being representative of the Ukrainian migrant community sample, including gender representation. Future studies of migrants’ technology-mediated communication and well-being should focus on research in a more controlled study design.