ABSTRACT
This chapter reports on a project recently carried out by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Research Centre on Micro-Social Change in Britain based at the University of Essex. The Household Allocative Systems Project explicitly used a combination of research methodologies, techniques and theoretical approaches in studying the allocation of resources within households. The chapter concentrates on the research process itself and the implications of using multiple research methodologies and techniques in a mutually informative way in designing and carrying out social research in the field. It examines the process of data collection in relation to the practical considerations faced by the research team and also explores the linkage between the qualitative and quantitative phases of the research. The chapter covers the difficulties posed by practical constraints on the design of the questionnaire to be used by the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) in the quantitative phase of the research.
