Interviews and questionnaires as mixed methods in population geography : the case of lone fathers in Newcastle, Australia

A mixed method approach was adopted to study the experiences of lone fathers, using a classic triangulation approach of interview and questionnaire data. This study utilised an empirical realist framework of scientific enquiry, with the ‘soft’ individual interview data seen as an adjunct to the ‘hard’ aggregate quantitative methods. A review of this study found that the interviews worked well as a pilot study in a classic mixed methods framework.The questionnaires provided a range of information about the characteristics of this group of lone fathers, but it was the interviews which providedastonishing depth on the causes of marital breakdown and post-marital conflict, and on the discourses and other structures which sustain social processes. In this study, the interview techniques could have been used differently, in a different framework of analysis (that of critical rather than empirical realism) without the support of other mixed methods.