Prompt Engineering Strategies for LLM-based Qualitative Coding of Psychological Safety in Software Engineering Communities: A Controlled Empirical Study

ArXi:2605.07422v1 Announce Type: cross Qualitative analysis plays a pivotal role in understanding the human and social aspects of software engineering. However, it remains a demanding process shaped by the subjective interpretation of individual researchers and sensitive to methodological choices such as prompt design. Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) offer promising opportunities to this type of analysis, although their reliability in reproducing human qualitative reasoning under varying prompting conditions remains largely untested.