Generative AI Meets Open-Ended Survey Responses: Research Participant Use of AI and Homogenization

• Published in: Sociological methods & research Vol. 54; no. 3; pp. 1197 - 1242
• Main Authors: Zhang, Simone, Xu, Janet, Alvero, AJ
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.08.2025; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Artificial intelligence; Data quality; Homogeneity; Humans; Internet; Language usage; Polls & surveys; Popularity; Research subjects; Responses; Social groups; Social research; surveys; data quality; human-AI interaction; large language models; generative AI

The growing popularity of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools presents new challenges for data quality in online surveys and experiments. This study examines participants’ use of large language models to answer open-ended survey questions and describes empirical tendencies in human versus...