Objectives: To explore how patients choose individual osteopaths to consult; to test whether patients’ preferences for osteopaths depend on gender, the osteopath’s qualifications, and the cost of treatment; to explore patients’ perspectives. Design. An explanatory mixed methods design incorporating a quasi-experimental study administered by postal survey and a qualitative interview study. Setting. One sample of patients at a private-sector complementary therapy clinic in the UK completed a survey; a second sample of patients recruited from osteopathy clinics took part in qualitative interviews. Main Outcome Measures. In the survey, male and female respondents (n=176) rated the likelihood of consulting each of 8 fictional osteopaths, representing all possible combinations of 3 factors (practitioner gender, biomedically qualified or not, working in a public sector or private clinic). Semi-structured qualitative interviews (n=19) about patients’ experiences of osteopathy were analysed deductively and inductively. Results. Survey respondents preferred osteopaths who were also biomedical doctors, F(1,174) = 67.21, p