Selecting Between BERT and GPT for Text Classification in Political Science Research

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Wang, Yu, Qu, Wen, Ye, Xin
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Wang, Yu
Qu, Wen
Ye, Xin
author_facet Wang, Yu
Qu, Wen
Ye, Xin
contents Political scientists often grapple with data scarcity in text classification. Recently, fine-tuned BERT models and their variants have gained traction as effective solutions to address this issue. In this study, we investigate the potential of GPT-based models combined with prompt engineering as a viable alternative. We conduct a series of experiments across various classification tasks, differing in the number of classes and complexity, to evaluate the effectiveness of BERT-based versus GPT-based models in low-data scenarios. Our findings indicate that while zero-shot and few-shot learning with GPT models provide reasonable performance and are well-suited for early-stage research exploration, they generally fall short - or, at best, match - the performance of BERT fine-tuning, particularly as the training set reaches a substantial size (e.g., 1,000 samples). We conclude by comparing these approaches in terms of performance, ease of use, and cost, providing practical guidance for researchers facing data limitations. Our results are particularly relevant for those engaged in quantitative text analysis in low-resource settings or with limited labeled data.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_05050
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Selecting Between BERT and GPT for Text Classification in Political Science Research
Wang, Yu
Qu, Wen
Ye, Xin
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Political scientists often grapple with data scarcity in text classification. Recently, fine-tuned BERT models and their variants have gained traction as effective solutions to address this issue. In this study, we investigate the potential of GPT-based models combined with prompt engineering as a viable alternative. We conduct a series of experiments across various classification tasks, differing in the number of classes and complexity, to evaluate the effectiveness of BERT-based versus GPT-based models in low-data scenarios. Our findings indicate that while zero-shot and few-shot learning with GPT models provide reasonable performance and are well-suited for early-stage research exploration, they generally fall short - or, at best, match - the performance of BERT fine-tuning, particularly as the training set reaches a substantial size (e.g., 1,000 samples). We conclude by comparing these approaches in terms of performance, ease of use, and cost, providing practical guidance for researchers facing data limitations. Our results are particularly relevant for those engaged in quantitative text analysis in low-resource settings or with limited labeled data.
title Selecting Between BERT and GPT for Text Classification in Political Science Research
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.05050