How To Critically Engage with Generative AI Across the Stages of the Social Research Toolbox (QGAP)

This guide introduces a framework to help researchers and students navigate Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) across the various stages of the social research process. It aims to equip readers with critical thinking and evaluation skills to both engage with these tools themselves, and to evaluate others' uses of them. This guide can either be read as a standalone resource or alongside the ‘Social Research Toolbox or QGAP’ series. I first offer an overview of some of the recent developments in the GenAI research space, including some of the controversies surrounding this rapidly evolving technology. I then introduce a framework for assessing your own and others’ use of GenAI in research – called the VERD+ principles. This framework is then used to examine GenAI applications at each stage of the QGAP research toolbox. While the landscape is evolving quickly, the framework is grounded in transferable principles intended to remain useful across future iterations of this technology. By the end of the guide, I hope readers will feel equipped to experiment with GenAI should they wish, to critically evaluate its outputs, and (where appropriate) to intentionally avoid it.