The THEMIS project has now completed the final quantitative, phase of our research project:– representative surveys with Moroccan, Brazilian and Ukrainian migrants.
Starting from January 2012 surveys were carried out amongst migrants groups in each of The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and the UK. These have now been completed.
In these 4 destination countries we are used RDS (Respondent Driven Sampling) for most populations, where respondents recruit their peers for subsequent interview. There is a gratitude payment made for taking part in a structured interview and also for every person they then recruit (up to a maximum of two). The peer recruitment process is managed in a controlled way – via distribution of coupons to hand on to personal contacts within that migrant community. This method of referral and access via personal networks aims to transform this snow-ball type sample into a more representative one (i.e. one that could be generalized for the whole population of Brazilians in London). We were aiming for a minimum sample size of 200 people per migrant group, per destination country.
As a later stage of this quantitative phase similar surveys were then carried out in the origin countries: Brazil, Morocco and the Ukraine. Local research teams led this research, as in Phase 3. Questionnaires and online data entry systems had been finalized for surveys in all three THEMIS origin countries, following piloting in each country. A minimum total of 400 surveys were carried out in each country (at two locations in each) and these were the final stage of THEMIS fieldwork and data collection. The survey localities were chosen to match those for earlier Phase 3 qualitative research in each country. Data collection began in Ukraine from September 2012 and was finished in all countries by the end of January 2013.