AI-Assisted Social Science Research: Methods, Governance and Reason Provenance

Abstract

AI-Assisted Social Science Research: Methods, Governance and Reason Provenance is a practical research and educational resource for documenting and governing generative-AI-assisted social-science research. The resource develops a workflow for distinguishing AI-assisted proposal generation, researcher evaluation and governance, local empirical execution, adversarial challenge, manuscript revision and reason provenance. It includes reusable templates, completed worked examples drawn from the PISA research programme, guidance on claim preservation and manuscript governance, and public-release screening materials. The resource is intended to support transparent attribution and disciplined research practice rather than to prescribe a universal workflow or to provide evidence that AI-assisted research is inherently superior to human-only research.