Ethical considerations for the use of artificial intelligence in qualitative research: Questions for researchers, ethics boards, and reviewers

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to quickly process large amounts of qualitative data and return results. Investigators conducting qualitative psychological research have examined how well AI can analyze text data and have found general consistency with human qualitative analysis but a lack of interpretive depth. Although quality of AI in qualitative research is important in appraising AI, ethical considerations are often overlooked. Researchers have little guidance regarding the ethics of AI in qualitative research. Therefore, the aim of this article is to provide a framework for the ethical considerations of AI use. The article includes a brief primer on AI use in qualitative research, but the focus is on ethical considerations for qualitative researchers contemplating or using AI in qualitative research, members and staff of institutional review boards (IRB) and research ethics boards, and reviewers of proposals and manuscripts. We propose a set of ethical questions for AI in qualitative research pertaining to: sensitivity of the data and the data management plan, de-identification, data transmission, AI assistants in software, data storage on AI servers, internal AI systems, training and model development, biases, reproducibility, and integrity, informed consent, and societal ethical issues. This article provides information about the current state of AI and ethical considerations to make more informed decisions about the potential benefits and risk of using AI in qualitative research.