Process Coding in Qualitative Research
Some qualitative research questions don't ask what or why. They ask how.
How do identities shift over time? How does a community respond to new challenges? How do routines evolve, break down, or reform? How do students use technology for their qualitative analysis work?
Process coding helps you follow that action, capturing movement, change, and sequences in your data over time. Instead of just what participants think or feel, you look for what they do.
This guide walks through what process coding is, how it fits into your broader qualitative workflows, when to use it, and how to make it more manageable with qualitative coding tools like Delve.
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What is process coding?
Process coding is an inductive qualitative coding technique where you use codes to communicate an action. Usually, with gerunds like "planning," "adjusting," or "struggling" that show movement and change happening. Saldaña explicitly refers to these gerund-based action labels as "process codes," because they emphasize how different topics unfold over time. You're looking for linearity.
Process coding is a first-cycle coding approach, meaning you use it when you're first working through your data and looking for new patterns you can build on. It gives you strong footholds to organize your material early on by focusing on the actions and sequences that pop up in your interviews.
This approach isn't typically a standalone coding lens, but one technique in your qualitative toolkit. You typically combine process coding with other first-cycle methods like descriptive coding (answers "what is this about?") or in vivo coding (for participants' exact words) to capture different viewpoints of your data. These are just a few of the approaches we cover in the essential guide to qualitative coding.
📘 Common first-cycle coding methods
"I was struggling to keep up, so I started waking up earlier to get a head start."
This single sentence could be approached with different coding methods, depending on what you want to capture:
| Method | Focus | Example code |
|---|---|---|
| Process coding | Actions and changes | "Waking up earlier" |
| Descriptive coding | Topics and subjects | "Time management" |
| In Vivo coding | Participants' exact words | "Struggling to keep up" |
How to spot action in your data
To capture this action-oriented dimension of your data, process codes capture both what people are telling you they actually do and the mental steps they take. Whether you're highlighting transcripts in a coding tool like Delve or marking up printed interviews, the key is staying focused on verbs and action words that show movement through time. That’s why you're looking for the “doing” verbs in their stories. That might be visible behaviors like "organizing files" or internal ones like "questioning assumptions."
Process codes work for two types of action:
Observable actions - what you can see someone doing
Conceptual actions - what's happening in someone's mind
Observable actions track what people physically do, while conceptual actions capture how they think through, reflect on, or mentally navigate situations. Whether you’re researching career transitions, team dynamics, or personal growth, process codes capture the step-by-step reality of how change happens through both external actions and internal processes.
💡 Spotting process opportunities
| Pattern | Example quote |
|---|---|
| Sequential steps | "First I did X, then Y" |
| Ongoing activities | "I kept trying different approaches" |
| Changes over time | "I gradually became more confident" |
| Problem-solving strategies | "I started reaching out to colleagues" |
When to use process coding
Process coding works best when your research asks "how" rather than "what." You can use it when you want to track or understand specific steps, sequences, and turning points that drive change over time.
Take workplace stress as an example. Process coding could show you how stress actually builds ("taking on extra projects," "skipping lunch breaks," "checking emails after hours") and how people manage it ("setting phone boundaries," "delegating tasks," "practicing breathing exercises"). Instead of just knowing that workplace stress exists, you see the specific pathway from overwhelm to coping.
This action focus makes process coding particularly valuable for:
Studying change over time: Whether it's how workplace stress develops or how employees recover from burnout, process coding captures the incremental steps that create larger changes.
Instead of broad categories like "work dissatisfaction," you get actionable sequences:
"questioning workload" → "exploring coping strategies" → "testing boundaries" → "committing to changes."Understanding adaptation and learning: Process coding reveals not just what stressed employees learn, but how they figure out what works. You see the trial-and-error, the adjustments, the breakthrough moments.
This might show: "recognizing early warning signs" → "experimenting with time management" → "asking supervisors for help" → "developing personal stress protocols."
Mapping problem-solving: Rather than identifying "stressors" and "solutions," process coding captures the messy reality of how people actually tackle workplace pressure.
Think: "identifying the breaking point" → "trying quick stress fixes" → "escalating to management" → "implementing systematic changes" → "evaluating what's working."
Tracing relationship building: Process coding shows how workplace support networks form through specific actions during stressful periods.
This might reveal: "opening up to trusted colleagues" → "testing vulnerability with small issues" → "sharing bigger struggles" → "building mutual support systems."
📘 Process coding is for research questions like
- How do new teachers develop classroom management skills?
- What is the process remote teams use to build trust?
- How do patients navigate complex healthcare systems?
These types of 'how' questions generate many interconnected codes, which is why researchers and students prefer using a qualitative analysis tool like Delve to keep everything organized from the start.]
The value of process coding is that it reveals the underlying, step-by-step dynamics of how these workplace processes actually unfold. When you understand these sequences and turning points, you gain richer insights into the mechanisms that actually drive change.
🔍 Process vs. static coding
Process coding asks: How do things unfold? This action-first approach helps you spot key turning points that static themes alone might miss.
Example of process coding in practice
Let's go back to our workplace stress example to see how this looks in practice. Now you're analyzing interviews with employees describing how they learned to manage their stress. The participant tells you:
"I started by tracking when I felt most overwhelmed, then I experimented with different boundary-setting =techniques. Once I found what worked, I began sharing those strategies with my teammates."
Rather than coding this as "stress management" or "coping strategies," process coding breaks it into specific actions:
Tracking stress patterns
Experimenting with boundaries
Sharing successful strategies
Each code captures a discrete step in the stress management sequence. As you code more interviews in tools like Delve, you start noticing patterns across all your coded excerpts (something that's much harder to track with scattered paper notes). Maybe most employees follow this same progression: awareness → experimentation → knowledge sharing. Or perhaps you find variations—some people jump straight to copying others' techniques, while others get stuck in the tracking phase without taking action.
This granular view reveals not just that people manage workplace stress, but how they approach the problem-solving process and what that tells you about self-awareness, risk tolerance, and peer support dynamics. You're building a map of the stress management process.
How to do process coding: Step-by-step
Now that we've seen how process coding works with our workplace stress example, let's dig into the details of actually doing it. While there's no single "right" way to do process coding, researchers like Saldaña have developed practical approaches that work well across different types of qualitative data.
♻️ Coding is cyclical
Before we jump in, try not to think about these steps happening in a straight line. You'll cycle back through them as your understanding develops through your codebook and memos. And remember, this is first-cycle coding, so you're building foundational patterns that you'll refine as you go.
1. Prepare your data
Make sure all transcripts or field notes are clear, cleaned up, and ready to code. That includes transcribing any audio files you want to analyze. If you're using software like Delve, import your files into a project so you can easily highlight and organize your codes as you work.
⚡️ Common coding challenge
Challenge: Getting files in the right format and keeping them organized can be tedious, especially with multiple transcripts.
Solution: Delve automatically formats uploaded transcripts and keeps everything in one centralized workspace, so you can focus on analysis rather than file management.
2. Read to find the action
Do a first pass through your data specifically looking for the verbs and sequences. Where’s the action? What’re people doing? How do events unfold? Where do you see change, adaptation, or progression?
In our workplace stress example, you might notice passages like "I started tracking when I felt most overwhelmed" or "I experimented with different boundary-setting techniques." You're looking for the verbs that drive the story of how stress management actually happens. Don't worry about creating codes just yet. These initial read throughs are more about getting to know your data and scanning for action.
⚡️ Common coding challenge
Challenge: It's easy to get distracted by interesting quotes that aren't actually about action or process.
Solution: Stay focused on the action. If you're working with spreadsheets or highlighters, you'll need to manually track these observations, but online tools like Delve let you highlight text and jot quick notes or memos as you read without disrupting your flow.
3. Code with action-oriented labels
Now go back through your data and start creating codes that capture those actions using "-ing" phrases. You’ve read through your data several times and typically have a pretty good idea of where you want to start. Stay close to participants' language while focusing on the action:
"I kept adjusting my boundaries after every stressful week." → Adjusting boundaries
"Eventually I stopped checking emails after 6pm." → Stopping checking emails
"We started having regular check-ins about workload." → Increasing team communication
The goal is to create codes that could theoretically be observed or measured. Even abstract processes like 'building confidence' or 'questioning priorities' represent actions that unfold over time in managing work stress. As you create codes, keep writing memos about your decisions. Focus on why certain actions felt significant or how they might connect to other processes you're seeing.
⚡️ Common coding challenge
Challenge: You'll end up with dozens of similar but slightly different action codes like "adjusting boundaries," "enforcing boundaries," and "communicating boundaries." Managing these variations manually becomes overwhelming quickly.
Solution: Delve lets you create each code once and reuse it across transcripts. The interface shows you existing codes as you type or lets you highlight and apply codes, preventing duplicates and maintaining consistency across your growing code list.
4. Look for patterns as you code
As your code list grows, start noticing connections. Which actions tend to cluster together? What sequences appear across multiple participants? Are there turning points where the stress management process shifts direction? This pattern recognition will send you back to earlier steps as you refine your understanding.
This is where you begin moving from individual actions to understanding processes. Your codes become building blocks for bigger insights about how people cope with stress at work.
⚡️ Common coding challenge
Challenge: With manual coding methods, it's an uphill battle to see patterns across multiple interviews without extensive copying and pasting quotes into separate documents.
Solution: Delve's code pages automatically gather all excerpts for each process code in one place, making it easy to spot sequences like "recognizing stress patterns" → "experimenting with solutions" → "implementing changes" without manual organization.
5. Organize codes into meaningful categories
Group related process codes into hierarchies that reflect the natural organization of the process you're studying. You'll likely reorganize these multiple times as your analysis develops:
Stress Recognition: "Tracking stress patterns," "Identifying triggers," "Recognizing warning signs"
Strategy Testing: "Experimenting with boundaries," "Trying time management," "Testing communication approaches"
Implementation: "Committing to changes," "Scaling successful strategies," "Maintaining new habits"
This organization helps you see both the detailed actions and the broader process patterns. Maybe like how stress recognition typically precedes strategy testing, or how implementation often requires returning to earlier phases when new stressors arise.
⚡️ Common coding challenge
Challenge: Creating and maintaining these hierarchies manually is time-consuming and error-prone, especially as your understanding evolves and you need to reorganize codes.
Solution: Delve's drag-and-drop nesting lets you organize codes into hierarchies. As patterns develop, simply drag codes into new categories without losing your detailed insights or having to recreate your entire organizational system.
6. Integrate with other coding approaches
This step is where process coding shows its real value as part of a broader analytical strategy. You might add descriptive codes to capture what the processes are about, include in vivo codes to preserve participants' exact language for key moments, or apply emotion codes to understand feelings associated with different stress responses. This integration often reveals new insights that send you back to refine your process codes – and vice versa.
💡 Coding the same data multiple ways
Take this quote: "I was drowning in emails, so I started batching them into two sessions per day."
- Process code: "Batching emails"
- In vivo code: "Drowning in emails"
- Emotion code: "Feeling overwhelmed"
- Descriptive code: "Email management strategies"
Each lens reveals different aspects of the same experience.
This multi-layered approach gives you both the detailed action map that process coding provides and the thematic insights that other methods offer.
⚡️ Common coding challenge
Challenge: You'll end up with dozens of similar but slightly different action codes like "adjusting boundaries," "enforcing boundaries," and "communicating boundaries." Managing these variations manually becomes overwhelming quickly.
Solution: Delve lets you merge codes by simply dragging one code onto another. All snippets from both codes combine into the merged result, so you can consolidate "adjusting boundaries" and "enforcing boundaries" into a single code without losing any of your coded data.
Challenge: Staying sane as your analysis grows
As you work through these steps, you'll encounter a common challenge that grows with every interview you code: Process coding generates valuable fine-grained insights, but managing all those action-oriented codes becomes overwhelming as your list grows. You'll likely end up with dozens of overlapping process codes that capture similar but distinct actions.
If you're working with a small dataset, manual tracking with highlighters or spreadsheets might work. But the moment you scale up to multiple interviews, team collaboration, or longer timelines, traditional methods break down when managing the volume of action codes that process coding generates. That's where purpose-built online qualitative data analysis tools make the difference.
For collaborative process coding: When multiple researchers are identifying action sequences, Delve's sharing features let team members work together in real-time and still code consistently. You can compare how different team members coded the same actions, consolidate similar process codes across the team, and discuss coding decisions through linked memos to ensure everyone captures actions consistently.
For scaling process analysis with AI: Delve's AI features can help apply your existing process codes consistently across new transcripts, suggest potential codes based on patterns in your existing process codebook, and support comparative analysis of action sequences. All this while preserving the detailed movement and change focus that makes process coding valuable for understanding how things unfold.
Start mapping the action with ease
Process coding transforms abstract research questions into concrete, observable sequences. Whether you're studying workplace stress responses, career transitions, or organizational change, the "-ing" focus reveals the step-by-step mechanics hidden in your participants' stories.
Ready to try it out yourself? Pick a single interview transcript and practice spotting the action words. You might be surprised by the process insights you discover when you shift from asking 'what happened' to 'how did it unfold.'
Try Delve's 14-day free trial to experience how the right tools can transform process coding from an overwhelming task into a well-oiled part of your qualitative research process.
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References
Saldaña, J. (2009). The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers. Sage Publications.
Miles, M. B., Huberman, A. M., & Saldaña, J. (2020). Qualitative Data Analysis: A Methods Sourcebook (4th ed.). Sage Publications.
Saldaña, J. (2011). Fundamentals of Qualitative Research. Oxford University Press.
Cite this blog post
Delve, Ho, L., & Limpaecher, A. (2025, June 17). Process Coding in Qualitative Research. Essential Guide to Coding Qualitative Data. https://delvetool.com/blog/processcoding