GB892 Unit 7 Thematic Analysis Example

Why Trucks Still Wait: A Unit 7 Thematic Analysis of Interviews in a Dock Appointment Study

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

GB892: Doctoral Project III: Data Analysis

Unit 7 Thematic Analysis

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Haverly Logistics, its participants and every excerpt are composite and illustrative; the excerpts are invented to show the method, and the sources cited are real.

The Question and the Analysis

The interviews answer the study's second research question: why do waits persist at centers where appointments exist? Eleven dock supervisors and six carrier dispatchers were interviewed. The codebook from Unit 3, built on the structure DeCuir-Gunby et al. (2011) recommend, was applied to every transcript, themes were then built across codes, a second reader coded three transcripts independently and the analyst kept memos throughout. The approach follows reflexive thematic analysis as Braun and Clarke (2019) describe it, in which themes are patterns of shared meaning that the analyst constructs and argues for, rather than topics that emerge on their own.

How the Themes Were Built

The themes did not come directly from the codes. After coding, the analyst grouped codes that seemed to describe the same underlying mechanism, wrote a one-sentence claim for each candidate theme and then reread every coded excerpt to test whether the claim held across participants. Two early candidate themes were merged: crew shortages and break coverage had first been treated separately, but the excerpts showed they described the same mismatch between slot times and crew schedules. One candidate theme, carrier distrust of the portal, was dropped because only two participants described it and their accounts were better explained by early arrival as strategy. The memos record each of these decisions with its date.

Theme One: A Slot for the Truck, Not the Crew

Claim. Appointments schedule trucks, but crews are still scheduled by shift, so booked trucks wait when their slot falls between crews or during a break.

Codes drawn together. Crew-slot mismatch, paperwork hold where it involved a crew shortage, and residual excerpts about breaks.

Contributors. Eight of the eleven supervisors and four of the six dispatchers.

Excerpts. A supervisor at one center: "The portal shows forty slots through the day, evenly spaced. My crews come in at six and two. Between one-thirty and two-fifteen I've got half a crew and three trucks booked." A dispatcher: "We hit the appointment. Then we sit, because there's nobody at the door." Another supervisor described moving one worker's break to cover a slot, then losing coverage at another door.

Theme Two: Early Is a Strategy

Claim. Carriers arrive early on purpose, because early trucks are sometimes served ahead of their slot, and early arrival makes everyone's wait longer.

Codes. Early arrival and walk-up handling.

Contributors. Five of the six dispatchers and six of the supervisors.

Excerpts. A dispatcher: "If my driver gets there an hour early and a door's open, they'll take him. If he gets there on time and the early guy took his door, he waits." A supervisor: "I'm not going to leave a door empty with a truck sitting in the yard." Supervisors described early arrival as a carrier problem; dispatchers described it as a rational response to how centers actually assign doors.

Theme Three: Floor Freight on a Pallet Clock

Claim. Appointment slots assume a standard unload time, but floor-loaded trailers take far longer, so one floor-loaded truck delays every slot after it at that door.

Codes. Floor-loaded duration and crew-slot mismatch.

Contributors. Seven of the eleven supervisors and two of the dispatchers.

Excerpts. A supervisor: "The portal gives everybody forty-five minutes. A floor-loaded fifty-three-footer is two hours with two people." A dispatcher noted that shippers rarely tell carriers whether a load is floor-loaded until the driver opens the doors.

Theme Four: Paper After the Freight

Claim. Trucks are held after unloading because paperwork, such as bills of lading or receiving discrepancies, is not resolved, and appointments do nothing to speed it.

Codes. Paperwork hold and detention dispute.

Contributors. Five supervisors and four dispatchers.

Excerpts. A dispatcher: "Unloaded in forty minutes, then forty more for someone to sign." A supervisor described a receiving clerk covering two buildings on the night shift.

Appointments changed when trucks arrived, but not who was there to unload them, how long the freight took or how fast the paper moved.

Accounts That Resist the Themes

Three accounts do not fit and are reported rather than set aside. Two dispatchers said that unbooked walk-up trucks now wait longer than before the portal, because booked trucks are served first. That account suggests appointments may have redistributed waiting rather than reducing it for everyone. One supervisor at a center with its own full-day crew rotation said nothing had changed at all, because his center already scheduled crews continuously and the portal added little. His account suggests the portal's effect depends on how a center staffs its docks, which the themes imply but the pooled estimate cannot show.

Differences Between Centers

The themes were not equally present at every center. Crew-slot mismatch dominated accounts from the four centers that ran two fixed receiving shifts, and was almost absent at the center whose supervisor described continuous crew rotation. Floor-loaded freight was raised most at the two centers serving furniture and appliance shippers, whose freight is often floor-loaded. These differences cannot rank the portal's effect by center, but they suggest where the effect might be smaller and why.

What the Themes Suggest for the Quantitative Strand

Each theme is linked, through the codebook, to a yard field that could test it. Theme one predicts long door waits for booked, on-time trucks in slots near shift changes. Theme two predicts that early arrivals wait longer for a door than on-time arrivals. Theme three predicts that floor-loaded visits occupy doors longer and delay the next visit. Theme four predicts that paperwork holds lengthen the interval after unloading regardless of appointments. These predictions are tested in the results chapter, where each theme is set beside its field, following the joint display approach Guetterman et al. (2015) recommend for showing where strands confirm, extend or contradict each other.

Limits

Seventeen interviews fell short of the twenty-four planned, with dispatchers the group most underrepresented. Participants were drawn from the six adopting centers only. And the analyst works for Haverly, which may have shaped what supervisors said; the second reader and the memos were the main protections against the analyst's own expectations. Every interview also opened with a statement that the analyst helped choose the portal, so that they knew whose study they were speaking to and could weigh their answers accordingly.

References

Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2019). Reflecting on reflexive thematic analysis. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 11(4), 589-597. https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676X.2019.1628806

DeCuir-Gunby, J. T., Marshall, P. L., & McCulloch, A. W. (2011). Developing and using a codebook for the analysis of interview data: An example from a professional development research project. Field Methods, 23(2), 136-155. https://doi.org/10.1177/1525822X10388468

Guetterman, T. C., Fetters, M. D., & Creswell, J. W. (2015). Integrating quantitative and qualitative results in health science mixed methods research through joint displays. Annals of Family Medicine, 13(6), 554-561. https://doi.org/10.1370/afm.1865