What's going on? Exploring drinking water practices as an outsider

Understanding existing drinking water practices is essential when trying to implement an improvement programme. Gaining this information can be particularly difficult for ‘outsiders’. This paper describes how using a mixed methodologies (or triangulation) approach, utilising both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, provides a deeper understanding of the situation. It highlights how qualitative and quantitative research is this instance is symbiotic providing depth and context to the data. The qualitative ethnographic results were used to question, validate and clarify the quantitative questionnaire results. Through this approach a number of interesting drinking water practices were identified in the case study area, Bellavista Nanay, Peru.