Navigating the Prompt Space: Improving LLM Classification of Social Science Texts Through Prompt Engineering
This paper demonstrates that while systematically varying prompt engineering elements like label descriptions, instructional nudges, and few-shot examples can significantly improve LLM classification accuracy for social science texts, performance gains are often marginal beyond minimal context increases, can sometimes decline with excessive context, and vary substantially across models and tasks, necessitating individual validation rather than reliance on general rules.