AcademiaOS: Automating Grounded Theory Development in Qualitative Research with Large Language Models

TL;DR

AcademiaOS leverages large language models to automate grounded theory development in qualitative research, aiding in coding data and developing themes, with positive user acceptance and open-source availability.

Contribution

It introduces an automated system using large language models to assist in qualitative grounded theory development, a novel application in this research area.

Findings

System finds acceptance among researchers

Potential to augment qualitative analysis

Open-source for community development

Abstract

AcademiaOS is a first attempt to automate grounded theory development in qualitative research with large language models. Using recent large language models' language understanding, generation, and reasoning capabilities, AcademiaOS codes curated qualitative raw data such as interview transcripts and develops themes and dimensions to further develop a grounded theoretical model, affording novel insights. A user study (n=19) suggests that the system finds acceptance in the academic community and exhibits the potential to augment humans in qualitative research. AcademiaOS has been made open-source for others to build upon and adapt to their use cases.