FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Everything you might want to know before asking.
Artificial intelligence
- Does the AI do the analysis?
- No. The AI SUGGESTS codes, themes and relations; accepting, editing or rejecting them is yours. An unaccepted suggestion never enters a matrix, a count or a report. This is not a UI choice but the data model itself: pending suggestions live in a separate table and are not codings until accepted.
- Can the AI fabricate quotes?
- Generative AI can produce incorrect, incomplete, or unsupported text. YouReply Qualitative therefore does not allow a suggestion to be accepted unless its exact source passage can be verified. Quotes in reports are retrieved from the stored source document rather than rewritten by the AI. Suggestions whose source cannot be verified are rejected or flagged for review. The researcher should still make the final check of every quote, its context, and its relevance to the study.
- Can I turn the AI off?
- Yes. AI is switched on or off separately in each study's settings. When a new study is created the setting currently starts switched on; if you will not use AI, turn it off while creating the study. When disabled, no new AI analysis is started for that study and the product still works fully: manual coding, the codebook, themes, matrices, memos and reports all remain available. Turning AI off does not by itself satisfy ethics committee or data protection obligations; this setting alone does not satisfy ethics approval, participant notice, consent, legal-basis, or institutional-policy requirements, and evaluating the rules that apply to your study remains the researcher’s responsibility.
- Do I need to declare AI use in my paper?
- Policies differ across journals, universities, graduate schools, funders, and ethics boards. You should check the current rules and publication guidance that apply to your study. The panel records the origin of every coding: done manually, accepted as suggested, or accepted with a different code. The codebook operation history is kept too, and merges and splits can carry a rationale note.
Data and privacy
- Where do my interview transcripts go?
- Text extracted from the documents you upload is stored with your workspace. When AI analysis is enabled, the text segments needed for the analysis (including speaker labels), codebook information and the research question are sent to the model provider (OpenAI); this is an international transfer. The provider’s retention period and other processing conditions depend on the provider agreement and the configuration of the API project being used. The current provider list is on the Sub-processors page, and transfer and retention information is in the Privacy Notice.
- Does the AI provider use my data to train its models?
- According to OpenAI’s published API terms, data sent through the API is not used to train models unless the organization explicitly opts in, and abuse-monitoring logs are retained for up to 30 days by default. These terms can be changed by the provider and depend on account configuration, so we do not commit to a specific retention period.
- How do I protect participant identities?
- Each participant has a code (P1, P07) and an optional pseudonym; matrices and reports use the code. There is no automatic pseudonymization: speaker labels and transcript text are sent as written when AI is on. We therefore recommend pseudonymizing names and direct identifiers yourself before uploading.
- Can I export my data?
- Yes. The codebook, quote table, matrix and full report download as Word and Excel; for PDF, use your browser's print function.
- Can I delete my documents, study or account?
- You can permanently delete documents in the panel; the text, segments and excerpts linked to them are deleted too. Studies are archived in the panel; deleting a study entirely cannot currently be done from the panel. To have study or account data deleted, write to kvkk@youreply.com.tr; requests are handled under the application procedure in the Privacy Notice.
Files and formats
- Which file formats can I upload?
- Word (.docx), PDF with a text layer, plain text (.txt, .md), subtitles (.vtt, .srt) and CSV. Subtitle and CSV files are read as plain text; timecodes and table columns are not processed separately. Excel files are not uploaded as documents; participant attributes are imported via CSV. The legacy .doc format is not supported; saving as .docx in Word is enough. Each file can be up to 20 MB.
- Can I upload scanned PDFs?
- No. We do not OCR scanned PDFs: a half-working OCR introduces silent errors into the transcript, and in qualitative analysis a single wrong word can change a finding. If you upload a PDF from which no text can be extracted, the panel warns you.
- Can I upload audio or video for transcription?
- Not today; the panel works with text. You can upload the output of your transcription tool (a Word or subtitle file) directly.
Plans and billing
- What is the unit: users or documents?
- Documents analyzed with AI per month. Manual coding is unlimited on every plan. Per-seat pricing would be wrong for qualitative work: one researcher may code 40 interviews for a thesis while an eight-person team processes 20 documents a month.
- Does re-running a document consume my quota twice?
- No. Quota is unique per (account, period, document); and if the document has not changed, the analysis is not re-run at all; the previous result is reused.
- Can I run a real study on the free plan?
- For a pilot, yes: one study, ten documents and unlimited manual coding. At thesis scale you will want the Academic plan.
- Does my plan renew automatically?
- No. Payment is taken once, in advance, for the monthly or annual period you choose; card details are not stored and nothing is charged at the end of the period. When the period ends your account returns to the free plan. To continue, you pay again for a new period.
- Which payment methods can I use?
- Card payment on the iyzico secure payment page, or bank transfer/EFT. For card payments, instalment options and accepted card types are shown on the iyzico payment screen. With bank transfer/EFT, the plan is activated once the payment is confirmed as received.
- What happens if I change plans?
- When you buy a different paid plan, the new plan starts as soon as payment is confirmed and its period runs from that day. No partial refund or credit is currently calculated for the remaining time on the previous plan, so we recommend checking the end date of your current period before changing. You cannot switch to the free plan while a paid period is running; the account returns to the free plan automatically when the period ends.
- How does the free trial work?
- You can try one of the Academic, Individual, Team or Business plans free for 14 days, once per product. No card is required and nothing is charged when the trial ends; the account then returns to the free plan.
- What are the right of withdrawal and refund terms?
- For consumers, the right of withdrawal in distance sales and its exceptions are governed by Article 48 of Turkish Law No. 6502 and the Distance Contracts Regulation. Information about starting the service immediately within the withdrawal period, and your consent to it, are obtained separately before payment. Details are in the Preliminary Information Form and the Delivery and Return Terms.