How To Do Process Coding

What is process coding?

With Process coding, you use codes to communicate an action in the data. Codes will typically be gerunds that end with “ing”. Process coding isn’t meant to be a standalone method of coding, but just one technique to use along with other coding techniques. 

Process coding is helpful when you want to understand actions in the data. You can catalogue both observable activities (running, singing, eating), or conceptual actions (thriving, adapting, struggling). 

When should I use process coding?

  • When studying rituals or habits of people

  • When researching a topic involving people reaching a goal or solving a problem

  • When capturing the sequence of events or steps

Process Coding Example

Here’s a transcript excerpt from when we interviewed a researcher about their research analysis process. Parts of the transcript have been edited for brevity.  

I generally read through all the transcripts1. And I tried to do it right after the interviews, just read through them and assign codes to things2. I thought might be valuable. There's always the thing that comes up in some initial interviews you don't realize something's going to be important and then after you hear it so many times, you're like, "Oh, yeah. I've heard this from a bunch of people."

But I did use the search to look for quotes sometimes3 and that was pretty helpful also. If I thought of something later on down the road, like, we were discussing cleanliness, then I would type in “cleanliness” or “clean” and see what kind of quotes came up.

A lot of my use for Delve was preparing my end report4 and pulling quotes. So when I was doing one particular section about, let's say, this neighborhood concept, I wanted a variety of quotes. I’d get one quote from Elaine, one from Larry, one from Eddy.

Codes:
1 Reading transcripts
2 Assigning codes
 3 Searching for quotes
 4 Preparing end report

Qualitative analysis doesn't have to be overwhelming

Take Delve's free online course to learn how to find themes and patterns in your qualitative data. Get started here.

Try Delve, Software for Process Coding

Online software such as Delve can help streamline how you’re coding your qualitative coding. Try a free trial or request a demo of the Delve.

References

  • Saldaña, J. (2009). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. Sage Publications Ltd.

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