IRELAND

approximately two-year intervals
thereafter, have remained the same
and this has been crucial to the
tracking of responses over time. But
flexibility is also provided for. ‘If
questions aren’t used, they’re
dropped’, says Brereton. Then there
is the allowance for new realities, with
Brereton pointing out that questions
that might have been appropriate for
the media module in 2002 would
have been entirely redundant a
decade later given the explosion of
online and social media that occurred
in the intervening years.
discovery Ireland 68,69
Complementing this core - and
recurring - set of themes are a series
of rotating modules which reflect
shifting topics of concern that must,
by necessity, be of relevance across
Europe. Ideas as to what should be
surveyed are proposed by teams of
academics and those that have been
chosen heretofore have addressed
such matters as healthcare, working
lives, democracy and immigration.