{"ID":2826211,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.11158","arxiv_id":"2602.11158","title":"Methodological Variation in Studying Staff and Student Perceptions of AI","abstract":"In this paper, we compare methodological approaches for comparing student and staff perceptions, and ask: how much do these measures vary across different approaches? We focus on the case of AI perceptions, which are generally assessed via a single quantitative or qualitative measure, or with a mixed methods approach that compares two distinct data sources - e.g. a quantitative questionnaire with qualitative comments. To compare different approaches, we collect two forms of qualitative data: standalone comments and structured focus groups. We conduct two analyses for each data source: with a sentiment and stance analysis, we measure overall negativity/positivity of the comments and focus group conversations, respectively. Meanwhile, word clouds from the comments and a thematic analysis of the focus groups provide further detail on the content of this qualitative data - particularly the thematic analysis, which includes both similarities and differences between students and staff. We show that different analyses can produce different results - for a single data source. This variation stems from the construct being evaluated - an overall measure of positivity/negativity can produce a different picture from more detailed content-based analyses. We discuss the implications of this variation for institutional contexts, and for the comparisons from previous studies.","short_abstract":"In this paper, we compare methodological approaches for comparing student and staff perceptions, and ask: how much do these measures vary across different approaches? We focus on the case of AI perceptions, which are generally assessed via a single quantitative or qualitative measure, or with a mixed methods approach t...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.11158","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.11158v1","authors":"[\"Juliana Gerard\",\"Morgan Macleod\",\"Kelly Norwood\",\"Aisling Reid\",\"Muskaan Singh\"]","published":"2025-12-22T11:04:46Z","proceeding":"cs.HC","tasks":"[\"cs.HC\",\"cs.AI\",\"cs.CY\"]","methods":"[]","has_code":false}