Determining the ‘necessities of life’ in the 2012 PSE-UK survey

Despite the growing international appeal of mixed method approaches, within UK poverty research genuinely mixed method designs remain rare. Fahmy and colleagues illustrate the potential of combining methods in the study of poverty, deprivation and living standards by drawing on qualitative development work undertaken as part of the 2012 UK Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey, the largest survey of its kind ever conducted in the UK. The authors illustrate the potential applications of qualitative methods in assessing the credibility of survey-based evidence on poverty and the contribution qualitative perspectives can make in understanding the public’s views on the necessities of life in the UK today. These findings have important implications for how we should interpret ‘consensus’ within survey-based consensual poverty measures.