Exploring Inductive and Deductive Qualitative Coding With AI: Investigating Inter-Rater Reliability Between Large Language Model and Human Coders

Qualitative research provides valuable insights into complex human phenomena, but its coding processes are often time-intensive and labor-intensive. The advent of Large Language Models (LLMs) has introduced new opportunities to streamline qualitative analysis. This study investigates the application of LLMs in both inductive and deductive coding tasks using real-world datasets, assessing their ability to complement traditional coding methods. To address challenges such as privacy concerns, prompt customization, and integration with qualitative workflows, we developed QualiGPT, an API-based tool that facilitates efficient and secure qualitative coding. Our evaluation shows that the consistency level between AI-generated codes and human coders is acceptable, particularly for inductive coding tasks where themes are identified without prior frameworks. In our case study using data from a Discord community, GPT-4 achieved a Cohen’s Kappa of 0.57 in inductive coding, demonstrating moderate agreement with human coders. For deductive coding, the inter-rater reliability between human coders and GPT-4 reached a Fleiss’ Kappa of 0.46, indicating a promising level of consistency when applying pre-established codebooks. These findings highlight the potential of LLMs to augment qualitative research by improving efficiency and consistency while maintaining the contextual depth that human researchers provide. We also observed that LLMs demonstrated higher internal consistency compared to human coders when using a codebook for deductive coding, suggesting their value in standardizing coding approaches. Additionally, we explored a novel paradigm where LLMs function not merely as coding tools but as collaborative co-researchers that independently analyze data alongside humans. This approach leverages LLMs’ strengths in generating high-quality themes and providing genuine content references, thereby enriching researchers’ insights while maintaining human oversight to ensure contextual understanding and ethical standards. Nevertheless, challenges remain regarding prompt engineering, domain-specific training, and the risk of fabricated information, underscoring the importance of human validation in the final analysis. This research advances human-AI collaboration in qualitative methods by exploring AI-assisted coding and highlighting future improvements in interaction design.