What the study analyzed
Federal workforce responses to a return-to-office mandate affecting over 1 million employees. As the authors note, manual coding of a corpus this large would have been impractical.
How Evidano fit the workflow
A documented, human-in-the-loop workflow
- 1Import
All 39,788 comments were imported into Evidano for AI-assisted coding.
- 2Code against your codebook
The tool coded comments against the researchers' predefined thematic grid, clustering passages by meaning. It produced a coding matrix with exemplar excerpts and text-level justifications for each decision.
- 3Human validation
The team reviewed classifications and manually verified a random 15% sample. No major misclassifications remained after refinement.
- 4Interpret
Researchers interpreted the validated themes within their conceptual framework. The tool organized material; the analysis stayed with the team.
“Rather than relying on keyword matching, Evidano identifies conceptual patterns based on contextual meaning, clustering related passages even when they do not share identical vocabulary.”
“This design ensured that AI augmented rather than replaced expert qualitative judgment, limiting automation bias while preserving analytical rigor.”
“The study demonstrates the value of AI-assisted qualitative analysis for examining large-scale administrative phenomena while retaining interpretive depth.”
From bottleneck to scalable analysis
Coding tens of thousands of comments by hand is impractical. Coder drift and fatigue build up at scale. Reproducing the exact process is difficult.
Codes the full corpus against your codebook. Deterministic outputs reduce drift and fatigue. Researchers review, validate, and stay in control.
Researchers reviewed and refined every classification.
Text-level justifications enabled auditing and contestation.
Deterministic, version-locked inference yields identical outputs.
About Evidano (previously AILYZE)
Evidano is AI-assisted qualitative data analysis software for interviews, focus groups, open-ended survey responses, and documents. It supports AI-assisted thematic analysis with your own or an AI-suggested codebook, transcription and translation in 100+ languages, clickable quotes and citations, and exportable visual reports. End-to-end encryption, no third-party data sharing, and your data is not used to train AI. From USD 50/month for unlimited analysis.
Run the first pass in days, not weeks
Keep the judgment with you. Let Evidano do the heavy lifting on your interviews, focus groups, open-ended responses, and documents.
More case studies
Government & Public SectorAI-assisted qualitative analysis is now in the published record
A 2026 study coded 5,211 federal-worker comments with AI, then reviewed every result by hand. See how the workflow held up.
Government & Public SectorAI-assisted qualitative analysis is moving into published research
A published Naval Postgraduate School thesis surfaced 62 concepts from 799 interview excerpts, then refined them by hand.
Government & Public SectorAI-assisted thematic analysis, used in published research
A peer-reviewed 2025 study disclosed Evidano for thematic analysis of qualitative focus group data.
Related published evidence
Researcher interviews and published citations covering comparable studies.
- Published research2026
AI-assisted qualitative analysis just showed up in published research
A peer-reviewed 2026 Education Sciences study used Evidano (previously AILYZE) to refine its qualitative analysis, with full researcher oversight.
22 courses' open-ended SET comments analyzed
Education Sciences
- Published research2024
AI-assisted analysis vs manual coding. UNICEF ran both.
Same 160 evaluations, two methods. See where Evidano matched human analysts and where humans stayed essential.
160 management responses
UNICEF Office of Emergency Programmes review
- Published research2026
A Journal of Experimental Criminology study triangulated its themes with Evidano
A peer-reviewed criminology study analysed its open-ended responses by hand, then used Evidano to triangulate the findings and surface oversights.
303 respondents in the conjoint survey
Journal of Experimental Criminology (Springer)
Explore more evidence
Researcher interviews, the wording authors published when citing Evidano, and accuracy comparisons against manual coding.
- Resource
Research spotlights: researchers in their own words
Interviews with researchers at leading universities and institutes about how they actually used Evidano in work they went on to publish.
- Resource
How Evidano was used, in published methods sections
Verbatim excerpts from 20 published studies describing what Evidano did in their analysis — as a thought partner, a second coder, for initial coding, or for synthesis.
- Resource
Methodology guides and research writing
Practical guides to qualitative methods — thematic analysis, grounded theory, evidence synthesis and more — alongside the wider Evidano article library.
- Resource
Human vs AI: validated accuracy benchmarks
Three head-to-head comparisons against expert human analysis — 371 interview transcripts with Arizona State and Penn State, 298 evaluation reports for a UN evaluation group, and UNICEF’s manual-coding review.