43 sources · 2020–2026 · Last updated: April 2026
A personal wiki covering the emerging literature on AI-assisted qualitative research — empirical benchmarks, methodological frameworks, epistemological debates, and practitioner ethics. Built to think with, not just to catalog.
Core question: Who holds interpretive authority — the researcher or the model? Every source in this wiki takes a position on this question, explicitly or not.
Concept map
Standing pages
These five pages are updated with every new source ingested. Start here for synthesis:
| Page | Focus |
|---|---|
| qualitative-ai-methods | Living taxonomy: AI as coder, discoverer, dialogic partner, assistant, pipeline |
| epistemology | Post-positivist · Interpretivist · Critical · Pragmatist · Post-humanist stances |
| human-ai-collaboration | CALM, CAAI, AbductivAI, GAITA, AI-in-the-loop, Reflexive TA frameworks |
| validity-trustworthiness | Reliability vs. validity gap; trustworthiness criteria; documented failure modes |
| contested-claims | Ten genuine disputes with best evidence on each side |
| empirical-findings | All empirical studies synthesized: benchmarks, tool comparisons, hallucination findings, practitioner behavior |
Key empirical findings
| Finding | Evidence | See |
|---|---|---|
| Reliable for structured small-q coding | κ 0.72–0.82; Jaccard ≈ 1.00 under ideal conditions | bijker-chatgpt-qca-2024, bennis-ai-thematic-analysis-2025 |
| Fails at cultural/linguistic depth | 80% descriptive vs. 30% culturally embedded (Japanese) | sakaguchi-chatgpt-japanese-2025 |
| Hallucination is design-dependent | 58% fabricated quotes with no constraints; near-zero with structure | jowsey-frankenstein-ai-ta-2025 |
| Tool choice encodes epistemology | ATLAS.ti/ChatGPT → post-positivist; MAXQDA/QInsights → interpretivist | ayik-et-al-2026-human-vs-ai-ta-tools |
| Experts use AI covertly | 13/14 Italian experts use AI; shame culture produces under-reporting | dellafiore-et-al-2025-expert-interviews |
| Low-frequency codes systematically missed | AI misses rare but analytically important items | salazar-gpt4-qualitative-2025, prescott-ai-thematic-analysis-2024 |
The rejection debate (2025–2026)
jowsey-et-al-2025-we-reject — 419 signatories including Braun, Clarke, Lupton, Fine — argues GenAI is categorically incompatible with Big-Q reflexive research on three grounds: AI cannot make meaning; reflexive research must remain distinctly human; environmental and social justice costs are unacceptable.
Four responses:
- de-paoli-reject-rejection-2026 — The letter conflates philosophy of mind with methodology. Human exceptionalism is a philosophical position (Searle, Chinese Room), not a methodological claim. Withdrawal cedes AI tool design to those without qualitative training.
- greenhalgh-2026-beyond-the-binary — The binary is the problem. Right question: does AI displace, obscure, or constrain the researcher’s reflexive engagement? Some uses do; others don’t. Four governance questions replace the for/against binary.
- wise-et-al-2026-ai-not-the-enemy — Maps LLM architectural properties (attention, long-context, pre-training) to five interpretivist commitments. AI can deepen interpretive work — not by replacing the researcher but by making thoroughness achievable.
- friese-et-al-beyond-binary-2026 — The most theoretically dense counter-response. Four authors (Friese, Nguyen-Trung, Powell, Morgan) with 100+ co-signatories. Deploys four philosophical frameworks simultaneously — assemblage theory (Deleuze & Guattari), distributed cognition (Hutchins), posthumanism (Barad), sociomateriality (Orlikowski) — to contest the “exclusively human” claim at its foundations. Also notes that Braun & Clarke’s signature on a categorical rejection letter contradicts their own prior insistence that reflexive TA is flexible with no single right way.
The underlying philosophical question — whether meaning-making is irreducibly human — cannot be resolved empirically. The counter-response is consolidating: three independent scholarly responses now contest the Jowsey position on philosophical grounds, while the empirical literature continues to develop practical frameworks for responsible integration. See contested-claims Claims 9 and 10.
Concept pages
- epistemic-flattening — Why LLMs structurally reproduce dominant patterns and suppress marginal meaning
- computational-grounded-theory — The CGT → CALM lineage; the foundational debate about who leads discovery
- llm-qualitative-research — Broad empirical landscape; the 2025–2026 field-level debates
- prompt-engineering — Prompts as methodological choices; interpretivist-specific techniques
- intercoder-agreement — κ and Jaccard: what they measure, what they miss
- ai-research-ethics — Privacy, consent, authorship, bias, sustainability
All 43 sources
Foundational nelson-computational-grounded-theory-2020 · carlsen-ralund-computational-grounded-theory-2022 · anis-french-ai-qualitative-research-2023
Empirical benchmarks bijker-chatgpt-qca-2024 · bennis-ai-thematic-analysis-2025 · prescott-ai-thematic-analysis-2024 · salazar-gpt4-qualitative-2025 · sakaguchi-chatgpt-japanese-2025 · jowsey-frankenstein-ai-ta-2025 · hamilton-ai-qualitative-2023 · yang-gpt4-qualitative-guide-2025 · ayik-et-al-2026-human-vs-ai-ta-tools · fischer-llm-qda-2024
Frameworks friese-caai-framework-2026 · costa-abductivai-2025 · nguyen-trung-gaita-2025 · nguyen-trung-nita-2026 · wise-et-al-2026-ai-not-the-enemy · ubellacker-academiaos-2024 · sinha-gpt4-grounded-theory-2024
Practical guides xu-ai-thematic-analysis-2026 · naeem-chatgpt-ta-steps-2025 · goyanes-chatgpt-protocol-2025 · nicmanis-spurrier-ai-guide-2025 · christou-ta-through-ai-2024 · christou-ai-resource-2023 · perkins-roe-genai-inductive-2024 · zhang-ai-qualitative-research-2025 · yang-gpt4-qualitative-guide-2025
Critical / epistemological brailas-ai-qualitative-research-2025 · chatzichristos-ai-positivism-2025 · williams-ai-paradigm-shifts-2024 · paulus-marone-qdas-discourse-2024 · wheeler-technological-reflexivity-2026 · dahal-genai-qualitative-nepal-2024 · dellafiore-et-al-2025-expert-interviews
The rejection debate jowsey-et-al-2025-we-reject · de-paoli-reject-rejection-2026 · greenhalgh-2026-beyond-the-binary · friese-et-al-beyond-binary-2026
Cross-disciplinary andrews-progress-or-perish-2026
Ethics and evaluation davison-ethics-genai-2024 · reeping-llm-quality-framework-2025 · montrosse-moorhead-ai-evaluation-2023