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PLOS study: Person-centred leadership qualitative analysis

Evidano6 min read

Evidano is an AI-powered qualitative data analysis platform that helps researchers analyze interviews, open-ended surveys, and documents. According to the PLOS One study, a six-month educational programme on person-centred leadership was experienced by participants to influence leadership practice in three development tracks: self-leadership, team-leadership, and workforce development. According to the PLOS One study, the programme admitted 80 leaders in 2022 and a purposive sub-sample of 13 leaders were interviewed between 27/01/2023 and 16/03/2023 to explore post-programme changes. This post refracts the PLOS One findings through the lens of AI-enabled qualitative research, showing how concrete numbers, timelines, and verbatim quotes from the study map to reproducible analytic steps and what teams should do next.

Key Takeaways

Yes: According to the PLOS One study published on July 22, 2026, participants reported that the six-month educational programme supported development of person-centred leadership across self-leadership, team-leadership, and workforce development.

  • According to the PLOS One study, the programme admitted 80 leaders in 2022 and 13 purposefully sampled leaders were interviewed between 27/01/2023 and 16/03/2023.
  • According to the PLOS One study, interviews lasted 40–65 minutes (mean 52 minutes) and were analysed using conventional content analysis that produced three visions and nine sub-categories.
  • According to the PLOS One study, the programme contained six modules and required workplace assignments, and participants said the programme worked best when organisational preconditions like managerial support and time to coach teams were present.
  • Quote from a participant in the PLOS One study: "You get the chance to pause and reflect in a way that you don’t usually do" (Interview 10, PLOS One).

What happened: study design and measures

The PLOS One study directly explored leaders’ experiences after a leadership programme, using qualitative interviews and conventional content analysis.

According to the PLOS One study, the educational programme was delivered by the University of Gothenburg Centre for Person-Centred Care and the Swedish Association of Health Professionals, ran for six months in 2022, and covered six modules including communication, ethics, and implementation strategies.

According to the PLOS One study, 13 participants were purposefully selected to maximise heterogeneity and interviewed three to five months after programme completion between 27/01/2023 and 16/03/2023, with interviews audio recorded and transcribed verbatim.

According to the PLOS One study, analysis was conducted by the study authors using an abductive approach: coding by the first author, independent checks by the last author, iterative clustering into categories, and interpretation through three analytical tracks: self-leadership, team-leadership, and workforce development.

Findings snapshot

DateMetricValueImplication
July 22, 2026Publication datePLOS One article publishedPeer-reviewed report to cite for programme outcomes
2022Programme intake80 leaders admittedLarge population for future mixed-method evaluation
27/01/2023–16/03/2023Interview window13 leaders interviewed, purposive samplingQualitative sample for experience-focused insight
40–65 minutes (mean 52 min)Interview lengthIn-depth semi-structured interviewsRich transcripts suitable for thematic analysis
6 modulesProgramme structureFoundations, communication, implementation, ethics, future careCurriculum aligns with GPCC routines for PCC operationalisation

Implications for qualitative researchers and UX/health researchers

Research teams should prioritise capturing preconditions and workplace assignments when evaluating leadership programmes because, according to the PLOS One study, those preconditions determined whether participants could apply learning.

According to the PLOS One study, leaders reported that practical workplace tasks plus peer reflection enabled translation of concepts into action, so evaluators should collect time-stamped activities, reflective journals, and implementation plans alongside interviews.

According to the PLOS One study, participants asked for patient and relative involvement to validate whether care had become more person-centred, so mixed-stakeholder data collection (leaders, staff, patients) strengthens claims about practice change.

How Evidano Helps

Problem: rich transcripts but slow synthesis

Solution: Evidano is an AI-powered qualitative data analysis platform that helps researchers analyze interviews, open-ended surveys, and documents by automating coding, extracting themes, and producing frequency and cross-segment analyses.

According to the PLOS One study, interviews lasted 40–65 minutes and produced rich transcripts, and Evidano speeds reproducible synthesis of that kind of material through thematic and content analysis tools and exportable audit trails.

See Evidano features for how automated codebooks, co-occurrence networks, and hierarchical code structures map to conventional content analysis.

Problem: workplace assignments and reflective journals are scattered

Solution: Evidano ingests documents, spreadsheets, and workplace artefacts and links them to interview segments to show when an insight emerged (time-stamping) and which module or exercise generated it.

According to the PLOS One study, workplace-based homework anchored learning, and Evidano’s multi-source ingestion lets teams connect interview quotes to specific assignments, improving transferability reporting.

Problem: interviews need clean transcripts and PII control

Solution: Evidano offers transcription with custom dictionaries and PII redaction, helping teams replicate the PLOS One study’s verbatim transcription standard while protecting confidentiality.

For audio-first projects, see Evidano speech-to-text to compare automated transcription plus human review workflows.

Problem: stakeholder questions during analysis

Solution: Evidano provides AI chat over your documents and analyses so teams can ask natural-language questions like "Which participants reported coaching barriers? " and receive excerpted evidence and counts linked to source transcripts.

This creates the kind of transparent audit trail the PLOS One authors used when they documented coding, categories, and the transition to an overarching theme.

FAQ: person-centred leadership qualitative analysis

Did the educational programme produce measurable changes in leadership practice?

Answer: According to the PLOS One study, participants reported perceived changes across self-leadership, team-leadership, and workforce development, but the study is qualitative and reports experience, not quantitative effect sizes.

According to the PLOS One study, 13 interviewed leaders described three visions (Live as you learn, Strive for equal relations, Enable co-creation) and nine sub-categories that together captured behavioural change themes.

What sample size and timing did the study use for post-programme interviews?

Answer: According to the PLOS One study, 13 leaders were purposefully selected and interviewed between 27/01/2023 and 16/03/2023, which was three to five months after programme completion.

According to the PLOS One study, interviews lasted 40–65 minutes with a mean of 52 minutes, providing depth for content analysis.

How should researchers combine qualitative findings like these with quantitative outcomes?

Answer: According to the PLOS One study, mixed-method follow-up is recommended, combining qualitative insights with quantitative measures of staff behaviour, patient experience, and implementation fidelity.

According to the PLOS One study, involving patients and relatives early improves validation, so include patient-reported measures alongside leader interviews in future evaluations.

How can AI help make this kind of qualitative analysis more rigorous and faster?

Answer: AI-enabled platforms accelerate coding, produce frequency counts, identify co-occurrence patterns, and surface exemplar quotes, improving reproducibility without removing researcher judgment.

According to PLOS One methods and best practices cited in the study, transparent coding and audit trails are essential; Evidano provides those audit trails and linking of codes to original transcript segments for confirmability.

Conclusion & Next Steps

According to the PLOS One study, a structured six-month educational programme was experienced to help leaders translate person-centred ethics into leadership practice when organisational preconditions were present.

According to the PLOS One study, future research should add quantitative measures and patient perspectives to validate self-reported changes.

If you run leadership or PCC evaluations, use AI-enabled qualitative analysis to speed coding, keep audit trails, and link quotes to source documents; see Evidano features for a quick feature map and Evidano speech-to-text for transcription options.

Try AI-assisted synthesis on your next leadership evaluation: Try Evidano for free.

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