Does Prompt Wording Change AI Qualitative Coding? (2025)

Qualitati Research Team · 2026-05-31 · 6 min read

Last updated: May 31, 2026

Short answer

Yes — how you word a prompt measurably changes the codes a large language model assigns to qualitative data. A 2025 study introducing HALC (Reich, Thoms & Schrimpf, 2025) tested 1,512 prompts across roughly two million model requests and found that systematically optimized prompts lifted agreement with expert human coders to Krippendorff's alpha up to 0.78. Prompt design is a validity decision, not a cosmetic one.

Where Qualitati fits

Qualitati's ThemeLens proposes themes that stay linked to participant quotes, and the QDA Workspace lets researchers review and validate every AI-assigned code before it counts as a finding — speed with human-in-the-loop rigor. See also our guide to LLM inter-rater reliability. View transparent pricing.

Full article available at qualitati.com/blog/prompt-engineering-llm-qualitative-coding-2025.