A guideline for researchers and program evaluators: Ethical use of AI and other tools in Qualitative Research (1)

My life as a qualitative researcher, program evaluator, and a professor of PhD level research methodology classes got super interesting in the last two years. I have been inundated with questions about the use of AI in qualitative research as each day another software popped up! Given that it is such a dynamic interdisciplinary space, I so badly needed a mental framework to empower my students, who are budding researchers, to not only use AI in their research, but also advocate for the ethical use of it, based on an everlasting criteria, so regardless of whatever shiny tool comes out tomorrow, it can stay relevant. Finally, I created one and began teaching it in the last two semesters. This framework does two things: It discusses the use if AI philosophically and framing the logically in the research process, and it offers ways to actually use it in each of the four dimensions of the research process. The feedback from my students was positive: a weight has been lifted from our shoulders. Now, it is time to share this framework widely, in the hope that it helps others as well!

Let's back up a bit and build some knowledge around qualitative research first:

What is qualitative research and what are its four dimensions?

Qualitative research is an intentional research design framework that prioritizes understanding and capturing the ideas, concepts, and events from the perspective of a participants through deep, rich and compelling accounts.

?Qualitative research approaches:?

• Study and honor the temporal, local, and contextual knowledge, activity, and experiences
• Do not seek to generalize to all populations, times or places
• Do not seek to prove or disprove an initial hypothesis as the goal of a study
• Suggest that the data analysis should be inductive and data driven rather than deductive, such as based on hypothesis or a prior theory
• Include a logical system based on a particular approach, or a combination of approaches, and follows a study plan that is at times flexible
• View the researcher’s lens - their background and experiences, as well as insider views - as an asset, an important tool in all stages of the research?
• Does not seek or claim neutrality

Research focus areas that can be answered through a qualitative research design include:

• understanding what is happening
• explaining why or how something is happening
• describing what happened over time in a person’s life
• exploring the meaning of a concept
• describing the many factors influencing something
• implementing a system and analyzing the process

Based on these focus areas, here are some example research questions that a qualitative design can support:

• What are the perspectives of families and teachers about the qualities of a good preschool teacher in the Midwest US?
• How do successful female building administrators engage with families in P-6 programs??
• What is disability from the perspectives of high school counselors in a California school system?
• What is the impact of Black Lives Matter movement on higher education DEIB policies and practices across the five Primarily White Institutions (PWI)?
• How do elementary teachers from a school in Northern Italy guide children to set learning goals for themselves?
• How did an elementary school in rural Iowa transform itself to be a leader in international and global curriculum?

After we established the framework of qualitative research, let's review the research timeline. The first step is developing a research protocol and gathering institutional permissions related to ethics and protection of human subjects . Once this is done, recruitment can begin, followed by data collection and analysis. In the next article, I will discuss these components of qualitative research and how AI and technology tools can be extremely helpful to qualitative researchers and program evaluators.

See Part 2 for the framework: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/guideline-researchers-program-evaluators-ethical-use-zeynep-gbgre/?trackingId=eUPspwONQhmQvPgHOK09Qw%3D%3D