What Is Process Coding?
Process coding is a qualitative coding method that uses gerunds, words ending in "-ing", to label actions, activities, and sequences observed in data. Instead of static topic labels like "price comparison" or "customer service," process codes capture movement: comparing prices, escalating complaints, losing patience, switching providers. The method was formalized by Johnny Saldana in The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers and draws on grounded theory's emphasis on understanding social processes. Process coding is especially useful when your research focuses on how things happen rather than what topics appear in the data.
Why Process Coding Matters
Most coding methods produce static categories, topics, concepts, or descriptive labels. Process coding keeps the action in your analysis. When you code with gerunds, you maintain awareness that human experience is dynamic: people are doing things, making decisions, changing direction, adapting. This orientation toward action makes process codes particularly valuable for research that aims to produce practical recommendations, it's easier to design interventions around abandoning carts than around the static category "checkout issues."
How Process Coding Works
The Mechanics
Process coding follows a straightforward principle: every code should be a gerund or gerund phrase.
Read each data segment and ask: "What is the participant doing here, physically, cognitively, or emotionally?" Then express the answer as an -ing phrase.
Data segment: "I looked at three different plans, went back and forth on the pricing page for like twenty minutes, then just gave up and stuck with what I had."
Process codes: comparing plans, deliberating on price, experiencing decision fatigue, defaulting to status quo
Notice how the gerund form forces you to capture the action, not just the topic. "Pricing" is a topic. "Deliberating on price" is an action that tells you something about the participant's experience and decision process.
Levels of Process
Process codes operate at different levels of specificity:
Micro-level processes capture individual actions: clicking through options, rereading the fine print, asking a colleague for input.
Meso-level processes capture sequences or phases: onboarding to a new tool, building a business case, transitioning between vendors.
Macro-level processes capture broader trajectories: becoming disillusioned with a brand, professionalizing a hobby, institutionalizing a workaround.
In practice, you'll code at multiple levels and use memo writing to track how micro-actions aggregate into meso-sequences and macro-trajectories.
Combining with Other Methods
Process coding works well as a companion to other first-cycle methods:
- Pair with in vivo coding when participants describe their actions in vivid language. "I was basically just winging it" becomes both an in vivo code and a process code.
- Pair with emotion coding to capture what participants were feeling while acting: feeling overwhelmed while comparing plans.
- Use process codes during open coding when your data is rich with action and sequence.
Moving to Second-Cycle Coding
After first-cycle process coding, look for patterns in your gerunds. Which processes recur across participants? Which follow predictable sequences? Group related process codes into phases or stages during pattern coding or axial coding.
For example, process codes like researching options, seeking peer validation, testing with a free trial, and negotiating internally might consolidate into a higher-order process: "Building confidence before committing." That abstraction, grounded in specific process codes, becomes a finding stakeholders can act on.
When to Use Process Coding
- Customer journey research: mapping the actions participants take across awareness, consideration, purchase, and post-purchase stages.
- UX and usability studies: capturing how users interact with interfaces, where they hesitate, and how they recover from errors.
- Organizational research: understanding workflows, decision processes, and how practices evolve over time.
- Behavioral research: any study where understanding what people do is as important as understanding what they think.
- Focus group analysis: tracking how group discussions develop through phases of consensus-building, disagreement, and resolution.
Common Mistakes
- Slipping into noun-based codes. It's easy to default to topic labels ("pricing," "onboarding") instead of process codes ("evaluating pricing," "learning during onboarding"). Keep checking that your codes are gerunds that capture action, not static nouns.
- Coding only observable behavior. Process coding applies to cognitive and emotional processes too. Rationalizing a decision, suppressing doubt, reframing expectations are valid process codes even though they describe internal actions.
- Treating all processes as equal. Some process codes represent fleeting moments; others represent extended activities. Use your memos to note the temporal scale of each process, which becomes important during second-cycle coding.
Quali-Fi Support
Quali-Fi's AI-powered qualitative analysis can identify action-oriented language across focus group transcripts, discussion boards, and open-ended survey data. The platform's thematic coding tools support gerund-based code structures, making it straightforward to build process-focused codebooks and trace behavioral sequences across participants.
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FAQs
What's the difference between process coding and descriptive coding?
Descriptive coding assigns topic labels to data segments ("customer service," "onboarding experience"). Process coding captures actions and movement ("complaining about service," "struggling through onboarding"). Descriptive coding tells you what the data is about; process coding tells you what's happening in the data. Both are first-cycle methods and can be used together.
Do all my codes need to be gerunds?
If you're doing process coding as your primary method, yes, that's the discipline that makes it work. In practice, most researchers combine process coding with other methods and use gerunds alongside descriptive, in vivo, or emotion codes. The important thing is to be intentional about which method you're applying to each segment.
When is process coding a bad fit?
Process coding is less useful when your data is primarily about beliefs, attitudes, or evaluations rather than actions. A study exploring cultural values or abstract perceptions might be better served by values coding or descriptive coding. If participants aren't describing what they did or how they did it, forcing gerund codes onto the data distorts rather than illuminates.