Qual Quant DOI 10.1007/s11135-013-9911-8 Interviewing and surveying over the phone: a reflexive account of a research on parenting Dafne Muntanyola Saura · Pedro Romero Balsas © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 Abstract This paper is on the role that the phone plays in a mixed-methods empirical research. In the current sociological literature, the phone is a methodological object associated with quantitative fieldwork, while little is said on the phone as a tool for qualitative research. We reflect here on a case study on the use of parental leaves by fathers in Spain, which included the phone as the only communication tool between researchers and subjects. We collect out own experience as interviewers in the qualitative phase of the research project, and interviewed surveyors working in the field. We analyze the discursive data following grounded theory principles and compare the use of both techniques in the data gathering process, including sampling and design. Thus, we consider interviewing and surveying as mediated communication situations. Our findings show that the value of the phone as a tool for research is a matter of adequacy to a given methodology, rather than an issue of validity, reliability, or credibility. Keywords Phone · Mixed-methods · Intimacy · Reflexivity · Instrusion 1 Introduction The impact of technology is a hot topic in the sociological field. The literature revolves around the use of digital media and the phone for surveys and other quantitative methods. Still, little has been said about the use of the phone in qualitative research processes. We present here a thoughtful reflection in order to understand the phone’s role in our research on the use of parental leaves in Spain, which included semi-structured interviews (Romero-Balsas et al. D. Muntanyola Saura (B ) Departament de Sociologia, Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona (UAB), B1-175, 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain e-mail: dafne.muntanyola@uab.cat P. Romero Balsas Departamento de Sociología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, M 5-209, Campus Cantoblanco Fco. Tomás y Valiente, 5, 28049 Madrid, Spain e-mail: pedro.romero@uam.es 123