The thesis presents the results of theoretical and empirical research on social-psychological strategies for life successfulness, the relevance of which was based on the need to rethink and identify strategies that facilitate life success achieving by internally displaced persons (IDPs), who moved due to military conflict in eastern Ukraine and Crimea annexation.
In the conditions of forced relocation, IDPs face a number of problems: adaptation to new living conditions, search for sources of income and family support, change of social status, and acceptance by the local community. These circumstances to a great extent reflect on the choice of means for goals achievement and view of the future. The choice of strategy determines what methods of achievement will be used, and what actions and tasks must be performed to achieve success. Without choosing an effective strategy, a person cannot plan, act consistently, or determine further steps. That is why the topic of the study, "Social-psychological strategies for life successfulness of internally displaced persons", is taking particular importance in current conditions. Identification of social-psychological strategies for life successfulness, their content and features of implementation among IDPs helps to increase the efficiency of life successfulness achievement/rebuilding practices, reinterpretation of life, and loss restoring in consequence of forced resettlement. The scientific novelty of the obtained results:
A novel contribution to Ukrainian social psychology
• the concept of "social-psychological strategies for life successfulness" was defined as a method of person’s interaction with other people for achieving balance and unity of the important component of life successfulness which are: the results of activities in important areas of life (life project realisation), evaluation of these results as significant; presence of emotionally coloured state; satisfaction of needs in self-fulfilment and self-realisation; experiencing subjective well-being, life satisfaction, sense of authorship and meaning of life;
• the scheme of social-psychological strategies for life successfulness deployment was offered and described through the realisation of own values based on which life project is formed, identifying possible ways of life project realisation with the further choice of the optimal actions with consideration of possible contradictions, obstacles and ways of their overcoming;
• the list of social-psychological strategies for life successfulness was offered, it includes the next strategies: reliance on close people's support; addressing helping professionals; acting according to the role model of other successful people; cooperation with others; using of others (manipulations); integration into the community, actions regardless social environment and circumstances;
• the commonalities and differences in repertories and methods of social-psychological strategies for life successfulness use among successful IDPs and non-IDPs, unsuccessful IDPs are determined;
• coaching was used as a tool for dealing with the requests of IDPs related to life successfulness and social-psychological strategies of its achievement; its advantages were identified as following: individual approach and tight concentration on request; increasing of ability to reflect, life successfulness, satisfaction with rest and relations with close people, prosociality, stress resistance, decreasing of the social desirability level; realisation of own strengths and weaknesses; development of analysis and evaluation, planning, communication, search and decision-making skills.
Contribution to expanding the vision of previously researched issues:
• ideas about life success, and life successfulness as non-identical terms;
• representations about crisis events in the process of life success and life successfulness deployment.
Ideas developed through the research:
• representations about the changing of life successfulness level due to the resettlement and adaptation to the consequences of the military conflict;
• ideas related to the evaluation of coaching effectiveness and usage of quantitative and qualitative metrics.
The practical value of the research
The dissertation research results can be used for correctional psychological work with IDPs, development of training and adaptation programs for these individuals, training of social workers involved in dealing with IDPs, and development of training programs for such work.
