DDBA 8303 Week 4 Interview Protocol Example

The Questions That Survived and the Ones That Did Not: An Interview Protocol for a Case Study of Why Drivers Stayed at a Regional Trucking Firm After It Moved From Mileage Pay to Activity-Based Pay, Each Cut Question Labeled With Its Fault

Student Name

Walden University

DDBA 8303: Qualitative and Case Study Methodology for Business Analysis Research

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

The Questions That Survived and the Ones That Did Not: An Interview Protocol for a Case Study of Why Drivers Stayed at a Regional Trucking Firm After It Moved From Mileage Pay to Activity-Based Pay, Each Cut Question Labeled With Its Fault

The Case and the Protocol's Purpose

Midland Freight Lines, a composite regional trucking firm in Omaha with about 280 drivers, changed how it paid drivers in 2025. Instead of paying by the mile, which left drivers unpaid while waiting at loading docks, it began paying for every hour on duty, with set rates for loading, unloading and waiting. Driver turnover, which had run above 70 percent a year, fell to about 45 percent in the following year. My research question asks what strategies the firm's leaders used to retain drivers through the pay restructuring. Drivers who stayed are one group I will interview, alongside dispatchers and managers. This protocol is for the driver interviews.

How the Protocol Was Built

I drafted questions from the research question, then tested them in two practice interviews with drivers from a different company and revised them with my chair. Kvale and Brinkmann (2009) describe good interview questions as brief, simple and open, inviting description rather than judgment. The interview protocol refinement framework (Castillo-Montoya, 2016) recommends checking each question against the research question, making the interview feel like an inquiry-based conversation and piloting before use. Most of the work shows only in what was cut, so the cut questions appear below with the fault that removed them.

Opening

Kept: "Tell me about how you came to drive for Midland and what a typical week looks like for you now."

Cut: "How long have you been a driver, and why did you choose Midland?" Fault: double-barreled. It asks two things, and in practice both drivers answered only the first.

The Pay Change

Kept: "Think back to when you first heard about the new pay system. What happened, and what did you think about it then?"

Cut: "Didn't the new pay system make you feel more valued?" Fault: leading. It names the answer the question wants. Both practice drivers agreed with it, and one later said the change had made no difference to how valued he felt.

Cut: "Why did you decide to stay after the pay change?" Fault: presupposing. It assumes the driver made a decision at the time of the change. One practice driver said he had never considered leaving and the question made him feel he should have.

Kept in its place: "Over the past year, have there been times you thought about driving somewhere else? Tell me about one of them."

Day-to-Day Experience

Kept: "Walk me through a recent day when you waited at a dock. How did the waiting time show up in your pay?"

Kept: "What, if anything, does your dispatcher do differently since the pay change?"

Cut: "How would you rate your satisfaction with your dispatcher on a scale of one to ten?" Fault: wrong form. A rating belongs on a survey; in an interview it closes the conversation instead of opening it.

Other Influences

Kept: "Besides pay, what keeps you at Midland, or makes you think about leaving?"

Cut: "Do you agree that home time is more important than pay?" Fault: leading and presupposing at once, since it assumes home time matters and asks the driver to rank it against pay.

Closing

Kept: "Is there anything about the pay change or about staying at Midland that I should have asked and did not?"

Notes on Use

Each interview will last about 45 minutes and will take place by phone at a time the driver chooses, often during a mandatory rest break, since drivers are on the road most days. Follow-up prompts such as "Can you give me an example?" and "What happened next?" are listed under each main question but will be used only when a driver's answer stays general. Patton (2015) recommends that follow-up probes be neutral and that the interviewer listen more than talk; I will record the length of my own speaking time in the first three interviews to check.

Ethics and Consent

Drivers will receive a one-page information sheet in advance and give consent at the start of each call, which will be recorded only with permission. Because the firm introduced me, drivers may worry that their answers reach managers; the sheet states that no individual's answers will be shared with the firm and that quotations will be attributed only as "a driver."

What the Protocol Cannot Reach

The protocol asks drivers who stayed. It cannot reach drivers who left, whose reasons may differ. Those drivers are outside this protocol and are noted as a limit of the case.

References

Castillo-Montoya, M. (2016). Preparing for interview research: The interview protocol refinement framework. The Qualitative Report, 21(5), 811-831. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2016.2337

Kvale, S., & Brinkmann, S. (2009). InterViews: Learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications.

Patton, M. Q. (2015). Qualitative research and evaluation methods (4th ed.). SAGE Publications.