In this video, I explain how to use AI Assist to create summaries and paraphrases for your research project, and to explore your documents.

The text below is the video script.

What’s the difference between paraphrases and summaries in MaxQda?

We all know what a “summary” is! It’s an abbreviated version of the content of a text. But, in Maxqda, on top of these “regular” summaries, there is also a tool call summaries and also a paraphrase option. So in short, you’ve got three kind of summaries is Maxqda. I know, it’s confusing at first. Bear with me!

• There are the “regular” summaries, that you can write in memos for example. 
• There is the “summary” tool. With that tool, you can write a summary of each topic, each theme, per document. So you can summarises each of your codes per document.
• And paraphrases are something else : a paraphrase is the reformulation of an extract from a document, you can rewrite it in your own words. 

So AI Assist can help you with these 3 things : “regular” summaries, MaxQda’s summaries (from the specific tool), and paraphrases.

Let’s see the different ways AI Assist can help you with summarising. 

Summarise a document with AI Assist

You can summarise a whole document.

• In the document system, with a right click on the document, you can customise your summary. 
• This window displays the same options for most AI Assist functions. For all these types of summaries, you can choose the language, the length, and of course once it’s been created, you can modify it as much as you like, format it, add text, edit and remove text. And you can add additional instructions or requests here. Like “Insist on this topic of found”, or things like that. 
• Your summary is in the document memo, at the bottom, in the spot for AI Assist Summaries. So, there is room for your summaries and notes about your documents, and for AI Assist summaries. 

Summarise text extracts with AI Assist

You can summarise extracts of text, text selected from your documents, like an answer to a question, or an extract from a paper… Whatever you want.

• Once you’ve highlighted some text, right click on the selected extract, or on the AI Assist icon in the toolbar of the document browser.
• It’s the same settings than previously.
• The summary will be inserted into an in-document memo, and you can edit it. 

Summarise coded segments with AI Assist

You can also use AI Assist to summarise a coded segment.

• With a right click on code name, then it’s the same thing, but the result will be in a comment. 
• If you can’t see the comments on the right hand side column, just click on the comment icon in the toolbar. 

For summarising coded segments, you can also do that from almost anywhere  your segments are displayed. Like from the retrieved segments window, from  the table view, from any matrix with segments, the smart coding tool. Anywhere, just look in the context menu or the toolbar, look for the AI Assist icon. 

Summarising codes

You can also summarise codes, or more precisely all segments coded with one of your codes. So, it’s summarising the content of your documents coded with a code, and giving you a summary of what’s been said on this topic, on this code, in your project.

• It’s from the code window.
• The summary will be inserted in the code memo, here

And it’s also available from segment matrix and smart coding tool 

Paraphrasing an extract with AI Assist

It can also help you to Paraphrase an extract of text. As I was saying, paraphrases are the reformulation of an extract, you can rewrite it in your own words. Or ask AI Assist to help with that. 

• It’s from the context menu of the extract.
• The paraphrase is going to be displayed in the right hand side column. 

Summarise all paraphrases from a document with AI Assist

And you can also summarise all paraphrases from a document. It’s from the document browser, in the toolbar.

Create summaries in summary grids with AI Assist

Last thing, AI Assist can help you create summaries in the summary grids. The summary grids are build to help you summarise everything coded with a code in a document.

• In a summary grid, you can see everything coded with a specific code in a specific document, and write a summary. 
• Or, you can ask AI Assist to provide a summary!

“Chatting” with your documents with AI Assist

You can also use the “Chat” to explore your documents. This is not about summarising, but a way to explore your documents and coded extracts. You can chat with a document, or with coded segments from a code. 

Let’s start with the documents. To open the chat, it’s from the document browser or the document system (you have to pick a document).

• You can ask questions about your document in the chat. For ex. “What is xxx saying about this topic ?”, “Is xxx happy about their current work life balance?” … 
• And there is a chat history. So you can find old conversations, rename conversations, and delete what you don’t want to keep.

For coded segments, you have to choose a code to chat with its coded segments. So it’s one code at a time, one subject or theme at a time. You can ask anything you like, for example: ‘Do they talk about their parents when they talk about this subject?’, ‘Do people seem happy with their situation when they talk about this subject? And, same thing, it’s the same chat, and you can rename and delete conversations.

To conclude, a word of caution

This is all very promising, but the use of AI in research is a fairly recent development, and we need to keep a critical eye on it. 

Mostly, we need to keep in mind that, like all tools … it is the user of the tool who is going determine whether the results are satisfactory or not, not the tool itself. It’s up to the user, it’s up to you to make informed, ethical and robust use of the tool. And it’s up to the you to judge the results obtained with the tool.
In short, it’s like having a research assistant: it’s here to assist in your project, but in the end, it’s up to you to give the right instructions and the right objectives, and it’s your responsibility to evaluate the results, and see if they are robust enough.