Table 3.

Data collection methods, focus of information collected, and rationale for collection

Data collection methods	Description	Focus of information collected	Reasons for its use
Key informant interviews	Interviews with sub-district level managers	Nature of PHC facility level leadership and management	To inform selection of facility managers to be involved in the study
		Process of initiating engaging with facility managers
Initial interviews with participating FMs	First interview with participating FMs	Life history—childhood and work experiences	To encourage the facility managers to start talking about themselves/their experiences from childhood
			To start to build trust based relationship
Follow-up interviews	Series of in-depth interviews	Childhood and work experiences, how they became managers, their job and challenges	FMs to reflect on initial information
			Researcher to validate information and get clarification on some events
			Researcher to collect new information
Reflecting on life stories	The researcher synthesized individual stories and presented them back to individual managers	Life history, work experience and how they became managers	To encourage more reflection on personal experiences and to validate information gathered
Reflections on critical incidents	Work-related important events, i.e. crises, achievements, difficulties, challenges or happy moments	Nature of PHC facility level leadership and management	To provide space for facility managers to reflect on critical incidents in their work
		Core leadership and management practices
Feedback from colleagues about participating FMs leadership and management practice	This was adopted from a 360° appraisal approach. The researcher gathered feedback from facility and sub-district staff and other actors	Leadership and management practice of the participating FMs	To gather perceptions about leadership and management practice of participating FMs
			To encourage participating FMs to reflect on how they are perceived by others
	The researcher synthesized the feedback and reflected on it with individual FMs
			For FMs to be aware of how their actions and behaviour impact on others
Document review	Job descriptions, key performance areas communication channels and management procedures	Nature of PHC facility level leadership and management	To understand prescribed processes of becoming a manager, required competencies tasks and other expectations
Observations	This involved informal observations in the facility	Interactions between the facility manager and clients or staff	To be familiar with everyday situations in the facility
Validation meetings	Group reflections with all participating managers	Commonalities and differences across participating FMs	To validate experiences of the participating managers. To generate ideas about support for PHC facility managers
Reflections with the wider research team	On a quarterly basis, we had reflections on the wider project including different pieces of research work within it	Methods and process of data collection.	Provided a platform for peer review
		Information being generated