Use of instructional videos in leadership education in higher education under COVID-19: A qualitative study

of participants, the duration, and the language used in each focus group interview. Besides, each focus group interview had two moderators, with the first moderator hosting the interview and the second moderator asking follow-up questions and taking notes. All moderators of the interviews have rich experience in qualitative research. 2.3. Instruments Qualitative research focuses on investigating “what” the participants have gone through and “how” they have experienced it [53, 56]. Following this principle, a semi-structured interview guide was developed for the focus group interview (Table 2). The interview guide was divided into five sections: 1) arrangement of watching these videos, 2) general learning experiences, 3) theory-related videos, 4) scenario videos, and 5) conclusion. Each section contains three to seven interview questions. In semi-structured interviews, the use of probing strategy and more open-ended questions by interviewers enable the understanding of more complex issues [68]. Moreover, open-ended questions are preferred in qualitative research because they allow par- ticipants to provide more description of their experience, which could lead to richer textual and structural description of participants’ experience in the final report [56]. 2.4. Data analyses According to Polkinghorne [69], the accuracy of transcription is one of the criteria for judging the quality of a qualitative study. Therefore, the 8 focus group interviews were verbatim tran- scribed, and then double-checked by an experienced researcher. Qualitative research does not

only describe what participants have experienced, but its data analysis focuses heavily on researchers’ interpretation [56]. Therefore, the transcripts were coded using line-by-line cod- ing, which refers to the coding of each line of text in the transcripts. It enables researcher to develop codes that reflect the experience of interviewees rather than the theoretical beliefs of the researcher [70]. To ensure that the data analysis was systematic and verifiable, line-by-line coding followed by constant comparison of the codes between focus groups were conducted [50]. The line-by- line coding identified 92 first order codes. At the secondary coding stage, insignificant codes were disregarded and similar codes were grouped under 22 second order codes, which could be combined into six themes. Besides, the frequency of each first order code was calculated. Sim [71] noted that group dynamics of each focus group would affect the occurrence of the first order codes. However, comparing the difference in topics discussed in each group, only a few topics were more frequently deliberated in some groups, which did not significantly affect the interpretation of the interview data. So, the frequencies of the first order codes could serve as a reference to the strength of participants’ opinions. Validity in qualitative research determines the accuracy, trustworthiness and credibility of the account or perceived realities of the researchers and research participants [72]. It focuses on the researchers’ care in the analysis procedures. Reliability assesses the agreement on codes

by multiple coders. Researchers stress that qualitative research emphasizes more on validity, while reliability only plays a minor role [73]. The concept of trustworthiness, containing four aspects (credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability), was also used by researchers to understand validity and reliability in qualitative research [72]. Additionally, researchers supported the importance of applying various methodological strategies to demon- strate the qualitative rigor [74]. Methodological strategies commonly applied in qualitative researchers include audit trail, member checking, peer debriefing, and rich description [74, 75]. In the current study, different strategies were applied in the research design and method- ology to ensure that findings of the research were valid and reliable. First, audio recording the PLOS ONE Qualitative evaluation of virtual teaching and learning videos in leadership education PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291861 September 21, 2023 6 / 28