Research with Generative AI: Prompting

Best Practices

Make your prompts concise, explicit, and logical. Use the PTCF method:

• Persona: Define the AI's persona
• Task: Clearly state the task
• Context: Provide any necessary context
• Format: Specify the output format

After you get a response, think about how it does and does not answer what you want. Adjust your original prompt accordingly. AI works best when you continue the conversation and adjust what you are asking.

Prompt Improvement Examples

Example: Create a cover letter for a project manager position.

Effective prompt: Act as a college student. Create a one page cover letter for a project manager position and include job experience for overseeing a 3-year open source data project to be read by a hiring manager at a data analytics firm.

Example: Create an outline for a paper on socioeconomic status and public transportation. 

Effective prompt: As a college student, create a list of subtopics for a research paper about the relationship between socioeconomic status and public transportation in the United States. The research question is asking if people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds use transportation more than other groups. I will focus on access and affordability nationwide. My analysis will prioritize quantitative data from the last 30 years. 

Follow up Prompts

When your AI tool doesn't offer accuracy, depth, or nuance, try:

• Facts and misconceptions about what I posted.
• Facts and misconceptions and hype about what I posted.
• What is the evidence for and against the claim I posted.
• Look at the most recent information on this issue, summarize how newer evidence, reporting, or other information shifts the analysis (if at all), and provide link to the latest info.
• Give me the background to this claim and the discourse on it that I need to understand its significance (and veracity).

When your AI tool responds with a hallucination, try: 

• Where did this claim come from?
• Find me a link to the original source. If not available, find a link to the closest thing to the original source.

When you're looking for a different format, try:

• Five bullet points, short sentences, summarizing the above, with sources
• Summarize the above
• The above, but easier reading level, with more popular (less scientific) sources
• Translate for non expert
• Boil the above down to 7 short bullet points with sources, but provide expert links.

Effective Follow-up Prompts is underdevelopment by Mike Caulfield.