Checking Boxes or Having Conversations?

So, I've got me research question (which definitely has the potential to evolve) and now my new focus in determining how exactly I'm going to study it. Sounds simple enough, but honestly, it's the aspect that I've gone back and forth with most during the process of preparing for my filed study. My two main options: quantitative (checking boxes) or qualitative (having conversations). Having conversations obviously sounds more desirable, but there are definite pros and cons to both.

Basic Rundown:
Quantitative Research: a formal, objective, systematic process in which numerical data are used to obtain information about the world. In English, what that means for my project, is that I could obtain or create a survey that I give out to as many people as possible (in the group I want to study), have them fill it out by either checking yes or no boxes, or rating their agreement or disagreement to a statement on a scale of 1-5, combine the data, and analyze it. The benefit of this is that analyzing my data could easily be down with a computer program and I could find solid correlations. The data is more "scientific."
-Questions Answered: What? Where? When?

Qualitative Research: This research's main goal is to gather an in-depth understanding of human behavior and the reasons that govern such behavior. The qualitative method investigates the why and how of decision making, not just what, where, when. So rather than handing out surveys and having individuals fill them out anonymously, I would conduct in-depth interviews with individuals. I feel like this is a great way to gain a deeper understanding of the culture and to get richer data, however, this method takes longer, my Italian is not at great at this point, and it's harder to analyze this data to find meaningful information that I could share by publishing a paper.
-Questions answered: Why? How?

Honestly, at this point, I'm planning on doing both. It would be great to get some hard quantitative data--and maybe even publish a paper! That said, I am going to live in Italy for 3 months--I love talking to people and plan on doing a lot of that while I'm in Italy anyway. My research topic is obviously something that I've very interested in and passionate about, so I might as well take things that I'm talking with people about anyway and use it towards research. Given, it will have to be slightly more structured than a random conversation, but an opportunity I would not want to miss out on.

Next step: find a great survey to use (and translate it!) and find more of the right questions to ask for my interviews :)