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Record W4417449885 · doi:10.1177/10778004251401851

We Reject the Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence for Reflexive Qualitative Research

2025· article· en· W4417449885 on OpenAlex

Why this work is in the frame

A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.

affAt least one author lists a Canadian institution in the pinned OpenAlex snapshot.

Bibliographic record

VenueQualitative Inquiry · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicQualitative Research Methods and Applications
Canadian institutionsCarleton University
Fundersnot available
KeywordsReflexivityQualitative researchGenerative grammarThematic analysisPosition paperPosition (finance)Qualitative property

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Four hundred and nineteen experienced qualitative researchers from 32 countries invite readers of Qualitative Inquiry to consider their position on use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) for qualitative research. We hold the position that analytic approaches such as reflexive thematic analysis are human research practices requiring a subjective, positioned, and reflexive researcher and therefore the use of GenAI in such approaches is not methodologically congruent. We additionally reject GenAI for reflexive qualitative approaches on the grounds of social and environmental justice.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

Direct model labels (unvalidated)

Per-model category and study-design labels from the labeling rounds. They are machine output, unvalidated, and the disagreement between models ships as data. No study design here is MEDLINE-validated yet.

Model armCategoriesStudy designConfidence
gemmaMetaresearch
Domain: Methods · Genre: Commentary
About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no
Theoretical or conceptuallow
gptMetaresearch
Domain: Methods · Genre: Commentary
About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no
Not applicablemedium
models splitAgreement compares identical category sets and study designs across arms.

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.045
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.038
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMetaresearch, Science and technology studies
Consensus categoriesMetaresearch, Science and technology studies
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Methods · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.575
Threshold uncertainty score0.999

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0450.038
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.003
Science and technology studies0.0020.009
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0010.000
Research integrity0.0000.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.902
GPT teacher head0.752
Teacher spread0.150 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it