Challenges in Survey Research

While being an important and often used research method, survey research has been less often discussed on a methodological level in empirical software engineering than other types of research. This chapter compiles a set of important and challenging issues in survey research based on experiences with several large-scale international surveys. The chapter covers theory building, sampling, invitation and follow-up, statistical as well as qualitative analysis of survey data and the usage of psychometrics in software engineering surveys.Comment: Accepted version of chapter in the upcoming book on Contemporary Empirical Methods in Software Engineering. Update includes revision of typos and additional figures. Last update includes fixing two small issues and typo

Escenarios de evaluación en el contexto de la pandemia por la COVID-19: la opinión del profesorado

En España, tras el Real Decreto 463/2020, de 14 de marzo, por el que se declara el estado de alarma para la gestión de la situación de crisis sanitaria ocasionada por la COVID-19, más de diez millones de estudiantes están intentando finalizar el curso desde sus casas. Para hacer esto posible, los docentes han realizado en este tiempo una impresionante transición de la educación presencial a la educación a distancia contando con recursos limitados, muy poco tiempo para la planificación y escasas instrucciones por parte de la Administración educativa. Una de las consecuencias del cierre de los centros educativos es la incertidumbre respecto a la evaluación del tercer trimestre y la evaluación final del curso 2019-2020. Por un lado, resulta tremendamente complicado organizar de manera improvisada una experiencia satisfactoria de aprendizaje a distancia y aún mucho más de evaluación en línea. Por otro lado, existe un número indeterminado de estudiantes cuyo derecho a la educación se ve amenazado por cuestiones sanitarias, familiares, socioeconómicas o tecnológicas. En todo caso, hay dudas razonables acerca de cómo están transcurriendo la enseñanza y el aprendizaje en estas circunstancias y sobre cómo se debe realizar la evaluación en esta situación de confinamiento y rodeados por una pandemia todavía por controlar. Por ello, el objetivo de este documento es realizar un análisis de escenarios para la evaluación del curso 2019-2020 y saber la opinión de los docentes respecto a estos escenarios. Conocer el futuro es imposible, pero plantearnos posibles futuros alternativos es una manera de reducir la incertidumbre y de prepararnos para tomar las mejores decisiones llegado el momento. Ese empeño preside estas páginas y cada palabra de este texto

Requirements reuse and requirement patterns: a state of the practice survey

Context. Requirements engineering is a discipline with numerous challenges to overcome. One of these challenges is the implementation of requirements reuse approaches. Although several theoretical proposals exist, little is known about the practices that are currently adopted in industry. Objective. Our goal is to contribute to the investigation of the state of the practice in the reuse of requirements, eliciting current practices from practitioners, and their opinions whenever appropriate. Besides reuse in general, we focus on requirement patterns as a particular strategy to reuse. Method. We conducted an exploratory survey based on an online questionnaire. We received 71 responses from requirements engineers with industrial experience in the field, which were analyzed in order to derive observations. Results. Although we found that a high majority of respondents declared some level of reuse in their projects (in particular, non-functional requirements were identified as the most similar and recurrent among projects), it is true that only a minority of them declared such reuse as a regular practice. Larger IT organizations and IT organizations with well-established software processes and methods present higher levels of reuse. Ignorance of reuse techniques and processes is the main reason preventing wider adoption. From the different existing reuse techniques, the simplest ones based on textual copy and subsequent tailoring of former requirements are the most adopted techniques. However, participants who apply reuse more often tend to use more elaborate techniques. Opinions of respondents about the use of requirement patterns show that they can be expected to mitigate problems related to the quality of the resulting requirements, such as lack of uniformity, inconsistency, or ambiguity. The main reasons behind the lack of adoption of requirement patterns by practitioners (in spite of the increasing research approaches proposed in the community) are related to the lack of a well-defined reuse method and involvement of requirement engineers.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

An instrument to measure students’ readiness for embedded system design course

Embedded Systems Design has emerged as one of the fastest growing areas in the world. In this regard, higher education institutions acknowledge the significance for offering Embedded Systems Design course to fulfil the needs of skilled human resources in the field. Unfortunately, being a highly difficult and specialized course, it requires students to have sufficient body of knowledge courses in both theory and practice. To address this issue, this study proposed an instrument to measure students’ readiness for Embedded Systems Design course. The study was conducted using a sequential exploratory mixed method design. First, a survey instrument named MeSRESD which consisted of 10 scales and 89 items was developed. MeSRESD assessed students’ cognitive, affective, and psychomotor skills through holistic assessment by taking into account the domains of technical skills, critical thinking skills, communication skills, team working skills, entrepreneurship skills, lifelong learning skills, level of interest, attitude, and prior experience. Content validity of MeSRESD was verified using content validity index (CVI) and content validity ratio (CVR). All MeSRESD scales showed CVI and CVR ranging from 0.92 to 1.00 and from 0.88 to 1.00 respectively, establishing an excellent content validity. A pilot study on 40 students was performed to assess the Cronbach’s alpha scale reliability. The results obtained were from 0.73 to 0.92 using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS 23.0) and from 0.70 to 0.99 using WINSTEPS 3.92.1, indicating an excellent internal consistency reliability. MeSRESD construct validity was established using Rasch Analysis and WINSTEPS 3.92.1. The results showed that all scales fitted the Rasch measurement model with acceptable fit index from 0.6 to 1.4 and demonstrated excellent consistency, with a reliability index from 0.97 to 0.99 for items and from 0.70 to 0.88 for persons. The unidimensionality of each MeSRESD scales was evaluated using principal component analysis. Based on these results, we concluded that the survey instrument was valid and reliable. MeSRESD was administered in nine universities in Malaysia, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia. A total of 415 questionnaires with a response rate of 97.4% were analysed. Based on the literature review, the readiness threshold of 3.40 was selected. However, the students’ mean scores of MeSRESD scales were from 2.47 to 2.89, which were lower than the threshold. In light of these results, the study revealed strong evidence that students lack prior knowledge and had poor understanding of Embedded Systems Design course. They possessed poor proficiency in critical thinking, communication, team working, entrepreneurship, and lifelong learning skills. In addition, they had low level of interest, lack of prior experience and had negative attitude towards learning Embedded Systems Design course. Therefore, there is a need for universities to address this issue and take remedial action to improve the chance of academic success for the students not only in Embedded Systems Design course, but also in other related courses

Innovation-Driven Growth in Heavy Equipment Firms

Lack of innovation-driven revenue growth can have adverse effects on organizational outcomes. Company leaders who do not pursue innovation put their firm\u27s survival at risk. Grounded in Christensen\u27s theory of disruptive innovation and Rogers\u27s diffusion of innovation theory, the purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to examine the relationship between company culture, company maturity, company revenue, and innovation-driven revenue growth rate in global heavy equipment manufacturing firms. Secondary data (N = 50) were collected from the Yellow Table, an annual listing of the top 50 global heavy equipment companies by revenue from 2002 to 2018. The results of the binary logistic regression were not significant, χ2(8, N = 50) = 8.84, p = .356. A key finding is that Japanese-culture companies are more likely to have high innovation-driven growth rates. The implications for positive social change include the opportunity for leaders to embrace new technologies and train and equip workforces to be ready to thrive in future environments, which could sustain and grow employment levels

Examination of Adoption Theory on the DevOps Practice of Continuous Delivery

Many organizations have difficulty adopting advanced software development practices. Some software development project managers in large organizations are not aligned with the relationship between performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions, as moderated by experience, with intent to adopt the DevOps practice of continuous delivery. The purpose of this study was to examine the statistical relationships between the independent variablesâperformance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions, as moderated by experienceâand the dependent variable of behavioral intent to adopt a continuous delivery system. Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, and Davis\u27s unified theory of acceptance and use of technology provided the theoretical framework. A stepwise multiple linear regression analysis was performed on survey data from 85 technical project managers affiliated with LinkedIn project management groups. The analysis reflected that only performance expectancy was significant in predicting intent to adopt continuous delivery. The findings may contribute to social change by providing project managers with the information they need to support organizational change, collaboration, and facilitation. The knowledge gained may additionally help organizations develop operational efficiency, competitive advantage, and generate higher value to their clients and society