AI Summary: Paraphrases of a Document

Please note: To use this feature, you need the AI Assist add-on.

What are paraphrases?

Paraphrases are brief, concise summaries of text passages, image segments, or video clips. For instance, they can help you

  • Familiarize yourself with data material
  • Systematically capture key statements from interviews, focus groups, or research articles
  • Develop inductive categories from the material, for example, in the context of qualitative content analysis

Paraphrases are valuable not only for qualitative research and creating a literature review but also for market research, marketing, and journalism.

In MAXQDA, you can either manually enter paraphrases or automatically generate them using AI Assist.

Automatically summarize paraphrases with AI Assist

Once you have created paraphrases for a document, you can automatically summarize them using AI Assist. This creates an integrated summary of the paraphrases. For instance, if you've paraphrased all the key points in a research article, you can have these paraphrases automatically condensed into a summary.

Unlike automatic document summarization with AI Assist, only the text passages you have paraphrased are considered here. This allows for a focused summary of the most important content.

The paraphrases next to the text can be automatically summarized with AI Assist

How to create an automatic summary of a document's paraphrases

  1. Open the document containing the paraphrases you wish to summarize.
  2. Hover over theAI Assist icon at the top of the document and select Summarize Paraphrases (as shown in the image above).
  3. Alternatively, navigate to the AI Assist main menu and select Summarize Paraphrases.
  4. In the options dialog, choose the language, the length and the type for the summary. Note that the original paraphrases may differ in language from the summary (AI Assist will auto-detect the language of the paraphrases).
The "Additional Instructions" field in the AI summary preferences dialog enables you to provide custom instructions on how AI Assist processes your request. For example, you could write, "Organize the summary into the following sections: 1. ..., 2. ..., 3. ... ." AI Assist will do its best to adhere to your instructions.

After clicking OK, the summary is automatically generated and saved in the document memo. MAXQDA then opens the document's memo, allowing you to immediately read and edit the summary in the "Document Summary" section.

The summary of the paraphrases is stored in the document memo

Notes:

  • AI Assist provides very good results for many use cases. Nevertheless, it is important that you review the results.
  • Summaries may not be generated for texts containing critical content (e.g., violence, hate speech, bullying).
  • Requesting a summary for the same paraphrases again may yield identical or very similar results.
  • Automatic summaries of paraphrases can be created for text and PDF documents.
To learn more about how we safeguard your data and privacy in relation to our AI Assist, please visit our Data Privacy and Security page.

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