From Haystacks to Meaning: Rethinking Methodological Approach

Jeff McCarthy

Athabasca University

MAIS 602

Dr. Lisa Micheelsen

Unit 3 Week 8 Revised Summary / Reflection

March 01, 2026

Introduction

Upon first reading, Seale and Tonkiss’ chapter on content and text analysis seemed straightforward and useful.  As I am studying leadership in complex crisis response, there will be no shortage of documents, including after-action reports, public health directives, media coverage, internal memos, and more.  The challenge, therefore, is not access to reams of information; it is figuring out which parts of the haystacks actually matter to my research question.  Content analysis provided a mathematical framework for sorting through those haystacks of information.  It appeared to offer a process for identifying patterns and themes without pretending that I could “read everything and determine meaning” (Seale & Tonkiss, 2018).  At the outset, that felt like a win and a strategic way forward.

As MAIS 602 progressed, I learned about additional methodologies, including Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), semiology, ethnography, narrative analysis, philosophical hermeneutics, and Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA).  I realized I needed my research question and approach to be more interpretive.  I no longer wanted to simply ask what was obvious from the documents, assuming that leadership lessons were sitting there on the page waiting for me.  Specifically, at the time, I was asking what lessons in adaptive leadership could be gleaned from the pandemic response.   In hindsight, this was too assuming.  Through readings of the following methodologies, I narrowed my focus to a much more interpretively aligned question: “How do public systems document and learn from complex crises?”  That question shifts the onus of the research from identifying themes and lessons to understanding how the meaning of adaptive leadership is defined, experienced, recorded, and built into organizational memory for later use.

I believe this shift may point to an overarching aspect of the qualitative approach: research questions evolve alongside the researcher’s understanding of the phenomenon and methodological possibilities (Creswell & Poth, 2018).

Content and Text Analysis:

I believe content and text analysis can be effective in my research approach.  This will help identify recurring themes in after-action reports, media reports and policy documents.  It will assist in identifying patterns in how power and authority may have shifted and been depicted, how responsibility and accountability are presented publicly, or how uncertainty (the complexity and fog of war) have been either acknowledged or avoided.  Organizational or systemic learning must leave a documentary trace, and content analysis can provide a method for finding those traces (Seale & Tonkiss, 2018).

However, the written record will only trace or unveil part of the story I hope to understand.  True adaptive leadership during a prolonged, complex crisis is not only explained succinctly in reports.  It happens in moments of fear, profound and often debilitating doubt, confusion, political calculations, and informal decision-making that may be oversimplified or altered by political masters months later in an after-action report.  Content analysis will help to reveal what was recorded, but it cannot tell me how those occurrences were experienced, misinterpreted, or actually interpreted by everyone involved.  For that reason, I now consider content and text analysis an add-on or a supportive first-step methodology.  It assists the overall process but does not adequately hold up as my primary approach.

Considering Alternative Methodologies

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)

Critical Discourse Analysis drew my attention because power dynamics are central to crisis leadership.  CDA could allow me to examine how authority is presented and legitimized through language.  However, my research is not primarily an exercise in analyzing ideologies.  While I remain acutely interested in crisis response power dynamics, my focus is shifting to how institutional learning (adaptive leadership) is formed, documented and learned from.  CDA seems to me to be more confrontational than my research approach requires and puts me at risk of unnecessary criticism or scrutiny.

Semiology

Semiology centres around symbolism and how it is interpreted and represented.  While seemingly useful in media analysis, I do not feel it adequately addresses governance structures, leadership processes, or organizational learning.  I am less interested in symbols and more interested in how decisions are made and how organizational learning happens or doesn’t happen in crisis response. 

Ethnography

Ethnography also required consideration, especially because I was directly involved in the pandemic response as a participant-observer.  On the surface, that kind of immersion seems perfectly fit for an ethnographic study.   However, this project is not built around culture or cultural observations.  It is highly retrospective and likely based on documentation supported by interviews.  I believe my lived experience is an important tool for interpreting my findings, but I am not interested in, nor do I see the virtue in, conducting a full ethnographic study.  Repeated reflexivity is obviously necessary, but full immersion itself is not a method of choice.

Narrative Analysis

Narrative analysis is the methodology that essentially brought me closer to what I am trying to understand.  It was revelational that institutional learning is best understood through storytelling.  After-action reports and public briefings tell the story of what happened and why.  However, narrative analysis alone is underwhelming as it is solely text-centred unless paired with the real-life experience of the people involved or impacted by those events.  I do not only want to analyze the story; I want to understand how that story was lived, documented and later remembered and applied to future emergency responses.

Philosophical Hermeneutics as Epistemological Foundation

These reflections led me to consider the methodology of philosophical hermeneutics more closely.  My evolving research question assumes that learning is interpretive.  It assumes that documents are not “neutral containers” of facts but rather the products of context, political pressure, and even hindsight.  Hermeneutics recognizes that understanding is historically situated and facilitated through language.  An after-action report is not simply a factual record; it is an interpretation shaped by institutional and political realities.  It is impacted by who is chosen to write it and who is chosen to interact with the first drafts, how many months have passed and what has been said or done since.  Meaning is derived from an ongoing “fusion of horizons” between the interpreter and the documents rather than objectively extracting and retelling facts.

Hermeneutics also requires recognizing and using the researcher’s position within the interpretive process.  I was not an external observer of the pandemic response.  Rather than attempting to isolate that experience entirely, a hermeneutic approach allows me to be reflexive with it.  Suddenly, my unique perspective becomes part of the “interpretive circle” rather than something to defend or skirt.

Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis as a Method

While hermeneutics provides the epistemological basis, Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) offers a more practical, narrower methodological approach.  IPA is especially appropriate for examining complex, emotionally charged experiences because it prioritizes detailed exploration of how individuals make sense of major life events (Smith et al., 2009).  Considering the complexity of how the pandemic impacted all facets of daily life, society, governance and leadership, IPA seems to offer the best-suited lense for this examination.  Because my research will examine how leaders interpret crisis decision-making and institutional learning processes, IPA enables me to interview individual responders for their reactions and impacts.

IPA’s emphasis on small but highly impactful interview samples and in-depth analysis appears to align with the scale of my project and early notions of whose voices matter.  I am not seeking a broad generalization but a deep and meaningful understanding of how key responders and leaders interpreted leadership, authority, and learning during a prolonged crisis.  IPA enables me to prioritize depth over breadth.  In a way, this represents a “double hermeneutic approach”: participants interpreting their experience, and I, as the researcher, interpreting those interpretations.  This layering is especially a hermeneutic framework.

Integrating these Approaches

In this refined, narrowed approach, content and text analysis continue to serve an important role.  It helps identify documented patterns in organizational and public records.  Those patterns are then interpreted hermeneutically and explored phenomenologically through interviews.  Content analysis helps map what was documented; hermeneutics and IPA will help interpret what that documentation means and how it was experienced.

Conclusion

This methodological approach aptly reflects the shift in my research question as it has evolved and narrowed.  Originally, I was focused on managing large volumes of text and testing my biased assumptions about political meddling and interventions in emergency response.  Something that has been proven in previous AARs to be a recurring problem.  Through my classmates' summaries and reflections on these methodologies, my focus quickly shifted to understanding how organizational learning is handled and how it influences leadership (from one crisis and AAR to the next).  Why do organizations poorly record adaptive organizational leadership lessons in real-time and continue to ignore the ones that are adeptly recorded?

Selecting philosophical hermeneutics as my epistemological starting point and IPA as my methodological approach, supported by content and text analysis, demonstrates how the methodologies that researchers choose can better shape and align the research question.  If I surmise that organizational learning is shaped by context (politics and power relationships) and multi-faceted interpretation, then the research approach should be interpretive as well.  I believe this allows me to research both organizational learning (adaptive leadership) and real-life leadership experiences in the most effective and academically rewarding way.

A Note on Linking Methodological Analysis to Future Capstone Output(s)

The entire exercise of refining my methodological approach forces me to reflect on what I hope to achieve through my capstone project.  If my research question concerns how systems may or may not document and learn from complex crises, then, in my view, the outputs should contribute to that learning in a usable, practical, and efficient way rather than remain purely theoretical.  I hope my research will lead to both an adaptive leadership framework for complex systems response and a new A.I.-assisted narrative structure for after-action reports that better captures the chaotic uncertainty, evolving decision-making, and lessons learned as they emerge in real time.  As my classmates have shown in their reflections, an interpretive approach fully supports these objectives by prioritizing ‘meaning-making’, experience, and context, the very aspects of after-action reports that are often missing.  I cannot ignore the potential for after-action reports to become far more effective and adaptable if my research suggests they can.  In this regard, my chosen methodological approach not only guides my research but may also shape the framework or tools (capstone outputs) that prove useful to leaders and emergency management practitioners facing future prolonged emergencies and black swan events.

Self-prescribed Reflexive Caution

At the same time, I fully recognize the risk associated with linking methodology to desired outputs too early in the process.  As Agee taught us early on, researchers must avoid “leading questions that arrive at certain conclusions before collecting data, which can bias a study and damage its credibility” (Agee, 2009, p. 444).  The outputs described here should be noted not as predestined solutions but as tentative yet hopeful possibilities that may evolve, be reconsidered, or even abandoned depending on where the research leads.  And, also as too obvious to irresponsibly ignore.  I endeavour that this research remains exploratory in nature and that any resulting outputs or reporting are born of meaningful findings and data rather than early assumptions.

References

Agee, J. (2009). Developing qualitative research questions: A reflective process. International Journal of     Qualitative Studies in Education, 22(4), 431–447. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518390902736512

Bowen, G. A. (2009).Document analysis as a qualitative research method.  Qualitative Research Journal, 9(2), 27–40. https://doi.org/10.3316/QRJ0902027

Creswell, J. W., & Poth, C. N. (2018).Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (4th ed.). Sage.

Gadamer, H.-G. (2004).  Truth and method (2nd rev. ed.). Continuum.  (Original work published 1960)

Seale, C., & Tonkiss, F. (2018). Content and text analysis. In C. Seale (Ed.), Researching society and culture (4th ed., pp. 404–427). Sage.

Smith, J. A., Flowers, P., & Larkin, M. (2009). Interpretative phenomenological analysis: Theory, method and research. Sage.