SPSA 2026: Generative Language Models in Political Science Research

This roundtable discussion follows up on a related working group at the 2025 APSA meeting in Vancouver, CA. It is intended as a step towards developing a set of validation practices and standards for working with generative AI tools in political science. Work using generative AI tools in political science has dramatically increased, but researchers still lack a set of best practices to validate and justify the use of generative AI tools in their many applications. This leaves scholars, reviewers, funders, and the discipline at large unsure how to evaluate the quality of research using generative AI in political science. We intend for the scope of this conversation to include best practices and evaluation standards related, but not limited, to: extent and disclosure of AI use in the research process, transparency and replicability, metrics and benchmarks for task - specific performance, and model selection.