Emory used a 100 word vocabulary list, which was a derivation of the Swadesh list with appropriate cultural substitutions (exclusion of Eurasian mammals & words without direct translations) and created reconstructions of proto-Polynesian and proto-East Polynesian to perform his analysis on. His results were stark, in both the linguistic similarity between the languages within East Polynesia and West Polynesia respectively and the comparatively large differences in language between East Polynesian and West Polynesian groups. This was more evidence that there was a long stay in West Polynesia before migration to West Polynesia began, which he estimated was at least 500 years long, but admits could be as high as 700 years. He was also able to estimate a long stay in Western Polynesia before dispersals began, and this time he estimated to be around 500 years.
He then performed pairwise comparisons between the languages of West and East Polynesia to establish a rough route of migration, which is pictured below with dates: