Higher Education Students’ Evolving Perceptions of ChatGPT: Global Survey Data from the Academic Year 2024–2025

Description

The introduction of ChatGPT in November 2022 marked a significant milestone in the application of artificial intelligence in higher education. Due to its advanced natural language processing capabilities, ChatGPT quickly became popular among students worldwide. However, the increasing acceptance of ChatGPT among students has attracted significant attention, sparking both excitement and scepticism globally. Building on the early students' perceptions of ChatGPT after the first year of introduction, a comprehensive and large-scale global survey was repeated between October 2024 and February 2025. The questionnaire was distributed in seven different languages: English, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, Japanese, Arabic, and Hebrew. It covered several aspects relevant to ChatGPT, including sociodemographic characteristics, usage, capabilities, regulation and ethical concerns, satisfaction and attitude, study issues and outcomes, skills development, labour market and skills mismatch, emotions, study and personal information, and general reflections. The survey targeted higher education students who are currently enrolled at any level in a higher education institution, are at least 18 years old, and have the legal capacity to provide free and voluntary consent to participate in an anonymous survey. Survey participants were recruited using a convenience sampling method, which involved promoting the survey in classrooms and through advertisements on university communication systems. The final dataset consists of 22,963 student responses from 120 different countries and territories. The data may prove useful for researchers studying students' perceptions of ChatGPT, including its implications across various aspects. Moreover, also higher education stakeholders may benefit from these data. While educators may benefit from the data in formulating curricula, including designing teaching methods and assessment tools, policymakers may consider the data when formulating strategies for higher education system development in the future.

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The data were collected through an attached online questionnaire. The survey was conducted using the web application 1KA (One Click Survey; https://www.1ka.si/d/en). Since the questionnaire required participants to have prior experience with ChatGPT, it was offered in full only to those who had used ChatGPT, while participants who had not used ChatGPT were offered only questions about sociodemographic characteristics, additional study and personal information, and the option to agree to receive the survey results. In the dataset, a consistent coding system is used to assign numerical values to responses. Each response option is assigned a specific numerical value. Binary responses are coded with 1 and 2. Question allowing multiple answers (Q13) is coded with 0 and 1, where 1 indicates selection and 0 indicates non-selection, with the Other selection offering the possibility to provide a written response. Multiple-choice questions assign sequential numerical values to each option. Likert scale questions use a range of values, such as 1 to 5, to represent levels of agreement or frequency. The coding system is applied consistently throughout the questionnaire. To ensure privacy, questions Q41 and Q42 were excluded from the dataset. Specifically, answers to the questions that sought responses regarding general views about ChatGPT (Q41) and requested the email addresses of participants for receiving survey results (Q42) were excluded to maintain anonymity and protect personal information. Since the questionnaire was prepared in seven different languages, information about the language version of the survey (source) was added to the dataset, i.e., English (EN), Italian (IT), Spanish (ES), Turkish (TR), Japanese (JP), Arabic (AR), and Hebrew (HE). The procedures of this survey complied with the provisions of the Declaration of Helsinki for research involving human participants and were approved by the ethical committees of several involved higher education institutions. To ensure proper acknowledgment when using the dataset and/or questionnaire, please cite both the dataset and the forthcoming main manuscript using the following citation: Citation: Aristovnik, A., Keržič, D., Tomaževič, N., Umek, L., Brezovar, N., ... & Ravšelj, D. (2025). Tracking Students’ Attitudes Toward ChatGPT in Higher Education: A Comparative Global Study Between 2023–2024 and 2024–2025. Manuscript in preparation for submission to PLoS ONE.

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