Artificial Intelligence Usage in Research Work among Office Technology and Manage-ment Students of Federal Polytechnic, Bali, Taraba State

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are increasingly shaping how students plan, conduct and report research. This study assessed the use of AI in research work by Office Technology and Management (OTM) students of Fed-eral Polytechnic, Bali, Taraba State, with a focus on two categories of tools: Large Language Models (LLMs) and automated data analysers. A descriptive survey design was adopted. The population comprised all 46 OTM students in the institution (18 National Diploma and 28 Higher National Diploma students), and all of them were studied through census sampling. Data were collected with a validated, self-developed instrument, the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Research Work Questionnaire (UAIRWQ), rated on a four-point scale. Fre-quency, percentage, mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions, and the two null hypotheses were tested with one-sample t-tests against a test value of 2.50 at the 0.05 level of significance. The results show that students used LLMs (cluster mean = 3.32, SD = 0.20) and automated data analysers (cluster mean = 3.41, SD = 0.38) to a high extent in their research work. The most highly rated uses were generating research topics, summarising literature, interpreting SPSS output and reducing calculation errors. The study recommends structured institutional guidance on the ethical and verified use of AI, formal training on statistical software, and the integration of AI literacy into the OTM curriculum. Because responses were highly homogeneous, the findings should be interpreted with caution.