MaxQDA with AI assist for social research

Overview — MaxQDA with AI assist is qualitative-analysis software used to code and analyse textual research data. The Social Research Profession is trialling its AI-assisted features to evaluate whether they can speed up qualitative analysis and improve its quality.

How it is used — Within the profession's ethical guidelines, the tool is being piloted across a range of analytical scenarios using qualitative (free-text) social-research data such as consultation responses and transcriptions of interviews and focus groups. Researchers use it to code data and query those codes in thematic analysis; the AI features can generate summaries of codes and coded text and support querying the documents to understand them better.

Scope and limitations — The trial is restricted to MaxQDA with the AI assist add-on; other add-ons (Transcription, Team Cloud and Tailwind) are not included. Social-research policy is that the tool is used only as an adjunct, secondary to the primary analysis, which is conducted by qualified researchers.

• Reduces the time taken for analysis of complex qualitative data, resulting in increased value for money for the Scottish Government.
• Improves the quality of qualitative analysis.
• Ensures researcher time can be devoted to research-specific tasks rather than more mundane work.
• Makes the best use of the skill sets of social researchers.