For this Irish Times Generation Emigration Survey, Ipsos MRBI interviewed 350 Irish nationals living abroad who had emigrated since 2008 and had left as an emigrant and not for extended travel. The research was conducted by phone from 20th May to 2nd June.

Accurately sampling the population of Irish emigrants is problematic, as no reliable measure of the emigrant population exists. The Central Statistics Office provide estimates of the number of Irish nationals emigrating each year but offers limited demographic information and none on destination countries. Therefore, for this survey a “purposive sampling” approach was used. Emigrants were identified by interviewers through existing networks of personal contacts, and rules were applied to avoid any clustering effect.