Several types of indium nitride films presently available have been studied with ion beam techniques including Elastic Recoil Detection (ERD) analysis and radioisotope implantation combined with Perturbed Angular Correlation spectroscopy. Severe beam-induced effusion of nitrogen during ERD analysis can successfully be modelled and accurate compositional information is obtained. All types of films analysed are nitrogen-rich. Perturbed Angular Correlation spectroscopy has been demonstrated to be able to detect indium clustering in indium nitride. Indium nitride is extremely sensitive to irradiation with heavy ions both at keV- and MeV-energies. For keV-energies heavy ion fluences of the order Of 10(14)cm(-2) can be expected to result in dissociation and significant nitrogen loss. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.