Elite Interviewing as a Research Method: A worked example studying Academic Leadership in Health Professions Education

Exploring how academic leaders shape the delivery and structure of health professions education (HPE) requires research approaches that move beyond descriptive accounts of students, programs, and systems to elicit the reasoning and values underpinning leadership decisions. Without methods capable of engaging with this complexity, research risks producing shallow or instrumental accounts that fail to generate constructive insights or prompt meaningful reform. The HPE literature has limited practical, worked examples of how to conduct such research, particularly with senior leaders. Elite interviewing, a method widely used in political science and sociology, offers a valuable but underutilized methodological approach. It prompts deep exploration of how individuals in positions of authority think, act, and negotiate personal values, organizational priorities and broader sociopolitical contexts. In this paper, we examine elite interviewing as a methodological approach and expand the details of the approach by proposing a framework for elite interviewing in HPE with six interrelated elements: narrative framing, co-construction of meaning, affective vulnerability, institutional critique, credibility building, and ethical reflexivity. Drawing on a worked example of interviews with academic leaders involved in medical education equity initiatives, we demonstrate how employing these elements supports depth, nuance, and reflexivity in both the interview process and analysis. Our aim is to provide practical guidance demonstrating the potential of elite interviewing to methodologically enrich qualitative research in HPE.