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Master ThesisSoftware EngineeringThesis no: MCS-2014-NN06 2014

Source of New and Advance ScientificKnowledge of Software Practitioners

Zakaria Mahmud

Dept. Computer Science & Engineering

Blekinge Institute of Technology

SE–371 79 Karlskrona, Sweden

This thesis is submitted to the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at Blekinge Institute of

Technology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Software Engi-

neering. The thesis is equivalent to 10 weeks of full-time studies.

Contact Information:Author: Zakaria Mahmud

E-mail: [email protected]

University advisor:

Prof. Kai Petersen

Dept. Computer Science & Engineering

Dept. Computer Science & Engineering Internet : www.bth.se/didd

Blekinge Institute of Technology Phone : +46 455 38 50 00

SE–371 79 Karlskrona, Sweden Fax : +46 455 38 50 57

Abstract

Context: Academic researchers publish their results of new and advanced scien-

tific knowledge (often in close collaboration with industry) in academic journals

and conferences. However, it is not know to what extent this information reaches

the practitioners. So far this has not been investigated. This information will help

researchers in the dissemination process of their research findings.

Objectives: In this study we investigate which types of knowledge dissemina-

tion forums exist in software engineering, how frequent and aware they are to

software practitioners and how useful they find it in improving their professional

activities.

Methods: We conducted a survey of software practitioners posted on LinkedIn,

Yahoo, Facebook, Google+, Meetup and Google groups. The survey contained

demographics information, seven types of forums for obtaining scientific knowl-

edge and how important respondents felt these forums improve their professional

activities.

Results: The results of the survey indicate that Book Publishers, Blogs, Video

Tutorial and Social Media are considerable forums of sharing new and advance

scientific knowledge for software practitioners. Whilst, IT magazines, scientific

journals and meetings are suggested to be less considered forums in gaining new

and advanced scientific knowledge.

Conclusions: We conclude that academic researchers could improve the expo-

sure of their research findings by presenting their results not only in journals and

meetings. But also in new forums where they can represent results in the form

of videos, blogs or social media. This exposes their research findings to a larger

audience of software practitioners.

Keywords: Software Practitioners, Knowledge Sharing Forums, Academic Re-

searchers, Survey.

List of Figures

4.1 Survey Questionnaire Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

5.1 Software practitioners access of journals based on level of education. . . . . 16

5.2 Software practitioners access to journals based on Year of Graduation. . . . 17

5.3 Software practitioners access to journals based on Roles. . . . . . . . . . . 18

5.4 Software practitioners access to meetings based on level of education. . . . 20

5.5 Software practitioners access to Meetings based on Year of Graduation. . . 20

5.6 Software practitioners access to Meetings based on Roles. . . . . . . . . . 21

5.7 Software practitioners access to IT magazines based on Level of Education. 23

5.8 Software practitioners access to IT Magazines based on Year of Graduation. 24

5.9 Software practitioners access to IT Magazines based on Roles. . . . . . . . 25

5.10 Software practitioners access to social media based on level of education. . 27

5.11 Software practitioners access to Social Media based on Year of Graduation. 27

5.12 Software practitioners access to Social Media based on Roles. . . . . . . . 28

5.13 Software practitioners access to Publisher books based on level of education. 30

5.14 Software practitioners access to Publisher Books based on Year of Graduation. 31

5.15 Software practitioners access to Publisher Books based on Roles. . . . . . . 32

5.16 Software practitioners access to video tutorials based on level of education. 34

5.17 Software practitioners access to video tutorials based on Year of Graduation. 34

5.18 Software practitioners access to video tutorials based on Roles. . . . . . . . 35

5.19 Software practitioners access to blogs based on level of education. . . . . . 37

5.20 Software practitioners access to blogs based on Year of Graduation. . . . . 38

5.21 Software practitioners access to Blogs based on Roles. . . . . . . . . . . . 39

5.22 Comparison of forums based on usages by Software practitioners. . . . . . 39

5.23 Software practitioners access of different forums to improve activity. . . . . 40

A.1 Survey Introduction Section Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

A.2 Demographic Questionnaire Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

A.3 Journal Questionnaire Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

A.4 Meeting Questionnaire Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

A.5 IT Magazine Questionnaire Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

A.6 Social Media Questionnaire Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

A.7 Book Publisher Questionnaire Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

A.8 Video Questionnaire Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

A.9 Blog Questionnaire Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

A.10 Usefulness of Forums Questionnaire Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

ii

List of Tables

5.1 List of the Variable Names and Their Descriptions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

5.2 Software Practitioners access to Scientific Journals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

5.3 Software Practitioners access to Scientific Meetings. . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

5.4 Software Practitioners Access to IT Magazines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

5.5 Software Practitioners Access to Social Media. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

5.6 Software Practitioners Access to Book Publishers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

5.7 Software Practitioners Access to Video Tutorials. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

5.8 Software Practitioners Access to Blogs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

5.9 Software Practitioners Access of several forums to improve activity. . . . . 40

iii

Contents

Abstract i

1 Introduction 1

2 Related Work 3

3 Aim and objectives 53.0.1 Aim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

3.0.2 Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

4 Method 64.1 Research Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

4.2 Study Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

4.3 Data Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

4.4 Threats to Validity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

5 Results 135.1 Respondents Demographics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

5.2 Results Outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

5.3 Scientific Journals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

5.4 Scientific Meetings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

5.5 Magazines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

5.6 Social Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

5.7 Book Publishers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

5.8 Video Tutorials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

5.9 Blogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

5.10 Forum Usefulness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

6 Analysis 41

7 Conclusions and Future Work 437.1 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

7.2 Future Work: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

7.3 Recommendation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

References 45

iv

Appendices 47

A Appendix 48

v

Chapter 1Introduction

New knowledge and technologies are emerging at a very high speed in both academia and

industry. These new discoveries have a significant impact in both our professional and social

lives. New knowledge discoveries have reshaped learning with electronic and/or distance

learning methods, for example professionals and low-income earners can obtain their higher

level degrees through electronic distance learning without the need for extra cost to travel in-

ternationally to obtain higher education [5]. Furthermore, new knowledge discoveries have

significantly improved academic and professional collaborations, such as sharing and devel-

opment of application programming frameworks like Zend for PHP professionals [4]. In

addition, there is a significant closing of the gap of social connections, for instance interna-

tional students use the Internet to communicate in real time with other people all over the

world both in terms of knowledge sharing and building a network of social connections [3].

Indeed, new and advanced knowledge have changed many real world environments.

Being aware of new knowledge and technologies means discovering new techniques or

solutions to further improve our current state of mind or practice. The sources of this new

or advanced knowledge can be obtained in many different types of knowledge sharing fo-

rums. These forums can be peer-review platforms, such as paper journals, articles, books,

etc. Otherwise new and advance scientific knowledge can be accessed simply through Web

2.0 (e.g. blogs, videos, social media etc.). In addition, the World Wide Web provides a

tremendous opportunity for knowledge sharing. It has a global information infrastructure

where researchers can publish their new findings. Software practitioners can have access to

those advancements easily [14]. Inside the World Wide Web, there are several knowledge

forums which publish new and advanced knowledge discoveries.

Software engineering is one of those scientific areas where the need to be updated with

new knowledge is key to success [20, 12]. This is because most often they are dealing

with improving and updating existence applications, which require new advanced and opti-

mised techniques [11, 6]. Software practitioners may use different blogs, normal websites,

both academic and professional journals and Wikis to access to new and advanced scientific

knowledge. 1

A blog [2] is a discussion or informational site published on the World Wide Web and

consisting of discrete entries ("posts") typically displayed in reverse chronological order.

Until 2009 blogs were not so popular. More recently multi-author blogs are developed by

the professionals and sometimes these are a valuable source of information for software prac-

1blogs (e.g. www.sshahblog.blogspot.se), normal websites (e.g. www.google.com ), both academic and

professional journals (e.g. www.ieee.com, www.computerworld.com) and Wiki (e.g. www.wikipedia.org).

1

Chapter 1. Introduction 2

titioners. There are several educational website which are related to software engineering,

such as Codinghorror, Joelonsoftware, APS.NET, etc. A survey of 1100 software developers

of four large open source communities indicate that software developers frequently use blogs

with new entries every 8 hours[15]. Software practitioners use blogs to collaborate and share

knowledge of new programming languages, libraries or development tools.

Wiki pages are one of the most common informal knowledge-based web application

which provides the opportunity to software practitioners to access new knowledge easily and

completely free of charge [18]. Another way of accessing new knowledge is in collaboration

with software engineering colleagues and direct research collaborations between academia

and software practitioners. With these different types of collaborations, there are many op-

portunities for software practitioners to learn about new and advanced knowledge.

Software engineering journals are published ostensibly to increase the knowledge of

readers. Whilst some of the journals are targeted for academic audiences, others aim at

professional readers or practitioners [8]. According to the literature reviews, it is not known

to what extend software practitioners use academic journals, peer reviewed conferences and

workshops. These often contain the latest knowledge and advancements as researchers use

them to publish their most recent results and solutions. Scientific journals often require more

mature and rigorously evaluated solutions.

Our proposition is that researchers publish their new discoveries primarily in academic

journals and conferences. However, we do not know whether this information ever reaches

the software practitioners. In order to address this knowledge gap, the aim of this research

project is to conduct a survey to capture where practitioners get new or advanced scientific

knowledge in the software engineering context. In particular, we capture how aware they

are when it comes to publication forums used by academic researchers (e.g. IEEE soft-

ware, Journal of Systems and Software, etc.). This new knowledge will guide researchers in

improving the process of knowledge dissemination targeting practitioners in software engi-

neering research.

Researcher do not know whether software practitioners visit academic journals and if

they do how often it is. This lack of knowledge hinders us in targeting the right forums

to disseminate academic knowledge, which slows technology transfer to industry. Hence,

understanding where practitioners learn about new advancements helps us in targeting the

right forums with our research results, not only having the academic perspective in mind.

Our research investigation will try to indentify where, how and the level of awareness

software practitioners have on the sources of new and advanced scientific knowledge. Thus,

our findings will help academic researchers to better understand in which forums they can

easily reach software practitioners.

The remaining part of the thesis is structured as follows: Chapter 2 presents the related

work of the research, Chapter 3 shows the aims and objectives of the thesis, Chapter 4 out-

lines the research method, Chapter 5 discusses the results, Chapter 6 provides the analysis of

the data, Chapter 7 Conclusions and Future Work.

Chapter 2Related Work

Researchers have investigated the impacts of specific knowledge sharing platforms on prac-

titioner’s work for many decades. This has created a better understanding of the relationship

between researchers, knowledge platforms and practitioners.

Flower and Palko’s [8] research result indicates the main purpose of technical journals is

to enhance the knowledge of their readers. A survey is carried out to understand how practi-

tioners obtain knowledge about new advancements. Previous studies show that professionals

are more interested in practical applications. In general, journals are considered to contain

reliable and mature information, while workshops and conferences publish research in early

stages (e.g. solution proposals). Though, previous research indicates that professionals do

not read journals for the solution to today’s problem [8].

Moody’s [14] research shows that professional people who are working in their field have

little time to keep up with the latest research. In addition, the large number of research papers

published every year means that the average practitioner would not have time to search, filter

and read research relevant to their problems. The World Wide Web provides a tremendous

opportunity to solve this problem, as it provides a global information infrastructure for con-

necting researchers who produce new knowledge and practitioners who would benefit from

this knowledge in their practical work [14]. At the same time, it provides an information

overload that needs to be filtered.

Panagiotoue et al. [16] represent that today’s software development is critical and it

requires new knowledge all the time. In their daily work activities, software engineers need to

create and share knowledge with each others. Although most software engineers use different

kinds of tools, they still face trouble when they attempt to use “syntactic” technologies ("e.g.they do not facilitate understanding the semantics of software artefacts and hence cannotfully support the knowledge-driven activities of developers"). In this paper [16] researchers

presented the KnowBench system, which is a knowledge workbench. The workbench is

built into in the Eclipse IDE based on Semantic Web technologies. The workbench visualize

software development knowledge for software developers.

Abidin and Nasiroh [1] proposed that online forums are very popular these days and it

became one kind of social media where people love to communicate and share information

freely. People, especially young people, prefer to choose the online media as their commu-

nication tool [19]. People who use online forums as a communication media are trying to

communicate through digital elements, especially in text format.

Phuwanartnurak’s [18] research indicates to develop successful software, knowledge and

expertise are required. The use of a knowledge-based Wiki for developing software has in-

3

Chapter 2. Related Work 4

creased significantly. Therefore software engineers often use these knowledge driven Wikis

to solve their challenges.

Most of the papers discussed the sharing of information between researchers and practi-

tioners [8, 14, 16, 1, 19, 18]. These papers do not specifically investigate the source of new

and advanced scientific knowledge targeting software practitioners. The aim and objectives

of this paper tries to address this research gap.

Chapter 3Aim and objectives

3.0.1 AimThe aim of this master thesis is to unveil how software practitioners learn about new and

advance scientific advancements in software engineering and how useful and aware they

perceive publication forums.

3.0.2 ObjectivesThe aim of this thesis will be achieved with the following objectives:

1. Identify which types of knowledge forums are currently used by the software practi-

tioners to gain new and advanced scientific knowledge.

2. Identify how often software practitioners are looking for new and advanced scientific

knowledge in research.

3. Identify which types of knowledge forums are the most useful sources of new and

advanced scientific knowledge from the software practitioners perspective.

4. Evaluate the impact of demographic factors on objectives 1 to 3

5

Chapter 4Method

There have already been some research investigations geared toward "Bridging the Gap"

between researchers and practitioners [7]. However, to our knowledge, there is no study in-

vestigating the sources of new scientific knowledge used by software engineering practition-

ers. Furthermore, how aware the practitioners are about the availability of research solutions

and how useful they find research papers published in academic journals and conferences

(e.g. IEEE Software, Journal of Systems and Software, etc.) has not been investigated. To

reach this goal, we are required to select an appropriate research methodology to achieve our

objectives and answer our research questions.

There are several ways of conducting research, such as: case study, experiment, litera-

ture review, implementation, interview and survey. Case studies are by definition conducted

in real world settings, and thus have a high degree of realism, mostly at the expense of the

level of control [21, 9]. Case studies are descriptive and exploratory analysis of software

engineering products or processes. This type of research explore causation to discover un-

derlying principles of the software product or process been investigated. With this type of

research few cases are investigated thus not appropriate for future generalization of results.

An experiment focuses on investigating a few variables and the way in which these are

affected by the experimental condition [9]. In research, experiments are used to falsify a

previously formulated hypothesis [9]. The hypothesis investigates whether one or more vari-

ables are manipulated to measure and determine their causal effect on a dependent variable

(s).

Implementation is another research method that develops or proposes a new solution

to answer a research question. In this type of research, the investigators build a complete

or prototype solution that will assist them in better understanding the software product or

service been investigated [9].

Meanwhile, literature review involves the evaluation and synthesis of existing academic

research topic [9]. In this research method, the investigator summarizes a number of relevant

previous studies done on the research topic and they critically evaluate the worth and validity

of those research findings to answer the research questions.

Interview is another type of research method that involves the investigator asking ques-

tions to an interviewee giving an answer to the question [9].

Examining the above mention research methods, we can conclude that a case study is

aimed at in-depth understanding of mostly qualitative research, while experiments aim at

controlling and comparing two interventions with each other. Interviews could be a very

good method but we do not have access to a easy access to a reasonable number of software

6

Chapter 4. Method 7

practitioners who will give us time from their busy schedules. In addition, the transcription

and analysis of interviews are very time consuming.

To appropriately answer our research questions, we aim to capture what software prac-

titioners are using (in terms of forums) to gain new and advance scientific knowledge in

software engineering. This means that a wide variety of practitioners should be targeted, and

they should be able to provide answers in a short time; hence, "closed questions" and very

few "open questions" should be the most appropriate in this regard. Thus, a research method

using a questionnaire-based survey with "closed questions" would hence be the best suited

research method than any other research methodologies.

Survey is a way to gather a high number of responses from a target group (population)

with the higher probability of generalizing the findings to that population [9]. This requires

random sampling, with the goal of having a high variety of respondents with respect to do-

mains, size of organization, experience, and education. This enables us to gather interesting

insights, allowing a better generalizability of our results in the software engineering industry.

The survey method uses questionnaires and is mostly a quantitative research method. The

advantage of survey research is that, we can ask highly standardised "close-ended" ques-

tions to targeted audiences [10]. Therefore, this will allow us to conveniently collect many

responses and conduct quantitative analysis.

We utilize convenience sampling targeting a high number of different practitioners. As

pointed out by Thörn et al.constructing a representative sample in software engineering is

virtually impossible as the contextual factors are poorly understand and hard to capture [22].

Similar arguments about statistical sampling have been made by Miller [13].

4.1 Research QuestionsThe following are the research questions to be investigated:

RQ1. Which types of knowledge dissemination platforms are currently used by the software

practitioners to gain new and advanced scientific knowledge?

RQ2. How often software practitioners are looking for new and advanced scientific knowl-

edge that related to software engineering in research?

RQ3. Which types of knowledge dissemination platforms are the most useful sources of new

and advanced scientific knowledge from the view point of software practitioners?

We need to analyze the software practitioner’s perspective of accessing new knowledge

for answering our research questions. The following subsection describes how the research

investigation was carried out using survey.

4.2 Study DesignA survey is a suitable research methodology of collecting a very high number of data points

from a large population. This method gives chance to an adequate response rate that can give

Chapter 4. Method 8

a significant sample representation of the population to make proper statistical inferences.

The survey questionnaire was designed with a mixture of both open and close ended ques-

tions. The final version was piloted with the help of three master students and the research

supervisor. The questionnaire demands about 5-10 minutes to fill in all details. Since our tar-

get population are software practitioners, we tried to cover a wide spectrum of practitioners

in software engineering domain. The following roles are targeted: requirement engineers,

system analysts, product managers, software architects, software developers, database de-

signers, software testers, project managers, technical writers, GUI and Interaction designers.

An on-line questionnaire will easily allow the maximum coverage and participation of prac-

titioners in different domain worldwide. The questionnaire contains six (6) demographic

and eight (8) main questions. The eight questions are seven for each type of forum and one

question about the usefulness of these forums. The questions are in the form of multiple

choices using Likert scale and free-text to capture examples of forums we have not men-

tioned. The questionnaire was validated by a researcher at Blekinge Institute of Technology

and Ericsson.

A brainstorming exercise in the form of a cluster analysis was conduct with iterative

reviews done by the supervisor to identify the types of knowledge dissemination platforms

(forums). We identified different types of knowledge sources used by software practition-

ers, such as books, websites, scientific and professional articles, scientific and professional

conferences, seminar, news, blogs, etc. In the next phase, we tried to cluster these differ-

ent sources of knowledge into different groups (clusters) such as publisher books, journals,

meetings, magazines, blogs, video and social media. With a comprehensive search using

Google, we identified lists of the top forum examples using reviews made by software engi-

neering experts. The forum examples that appeared most often in the different search results

were selected.

Engineering Village in June 6, 2014 conducted a similar survey using emails to get feed-

back on their search engine. It is to be noted that they have an almost exact source of

knowledge list as the one provided in answering RQ1. To see the list, go to the 75% progress

bar of the Engineering Village survey 1.

The survey link was posted in more than 200 groups in LinkedIn, Yahoo, Facebook,

Google+, Meetup and Google groups. These platforms provide a wide range of highly active

software practitioners discussions forums updated daily. The link has been online for two

weeks from 2014-05-11 to 2014-05-25 on Google Forms 2.

This online survey consists of four different parts. Figure 4.1 is a diagram that represents

the basic structure of the survey form.

1http://survey.confirmit.com/wix/p588453711.aspx?r=146049&s=ABNTDLCE2https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1VG_kINFCw_mU2NePECty1eWwdsEgReArCLM0erFc8n0/

viewform

Chapter 4. Method 9

Figure 4.1: Survey Questionnaire Design.

Part 1: Introduction

This section explain to the participant what the survey is all about. After reading this section,

the participants will get a overall idea what is the intention of this survey and why he or she

needs to participate before answering the questions.

Introduction:This survey is part of a master thesis that is currently being conducted at BlekingeInstitute of Technology, Sweden. It is aimed at understanding where softwarepractitioners, like yourself, obtain new and advanced knowledge. In order foracademic researchers to reach you in a better way, we want to understand howyou obtain new and advanced knowledge which contribute greatly in improvingyour professional activities. Therefore we need your participation".

Part 2: Demographics

This section contains the variables of demographic information. This information will give

us the background context of participants. The following are demographic information col-

lected: Age, Gender, Role, Years of Experience, Highest Level of Education, Year of Grad-

uation, Country and Email (optional).

Appendix A.2 is an example of how the Demographic question has been designed.

Chapter 4. Method 10

Part 3: Key Questions

This part of the survey answers RQ2. From these responses we can analyse the frequency of

use and awareness level of the listed journals and others which respondents will add.

From the forum types identified in RQ1, we have identified seven types of forums, which

are scientific journals, scientific meetings, IT magazines, blogs, social media, video tutorial

and publisher books . We have divided this part of the questionnaire into seven sub-section

based on forum type. In each forum, we present a list of well known forum examples and an

option for the respondent to freely add other common forum examples.

Each forum is categorised using a seven-level frequency Likert scale of "Always", "Very Fre-

quently", "Occasionally", "I don’t known the forum", "Rarely", "Very Rarely" and "Never".

These variables are key in finding the frequency and the awareness level of these forums

used by practitioners to answer RQ2.

These types of questions identify which types of forums are most commonly used and

how often software practitioners are looking for new and advanced scientific knowledge in

these forums.

Appendix A.5 is an example of how the forum IT Magazines question has been designed.

Part 4: Forum Usefulness

In this section we ask the respondent to grade the usefulness of each identified forum in RQ1

using a five-level agreement Likert scale; "Strongly Agree", "Agree", "Undecided", "Dis-

agree", "Strongly Disagree". This question answers RQ3, which investigate how software

practitioners feel about the usefulness of the identified forums in their professional activities.

Appendix A.10 is an example of how the forums usefulness question has been designed.

4.3 Data AnalysisIn our investigations, we have conducted a quantitative analysis. We downloaded the Google

Excel Sheet and used STATA statistical package together with Microsoft Excel Sheet.

Descriptive statistics is used to analyse the results obtained. In addition Correspondence

Analysis has been used to describe the relationship between two categorical variables, such

as Journals Usage vs Level of Education.

4.4 Threats to ValidityThreats to validity are important to discuss in order to appropriately critic the results of this

survey. This section describes different types of threats of validity and what strategies are

used to mitigate these risks. The main threats confronted by this study are construct validity,

internal validity, external validity and conclusion validity [23, 17] .

Figure out: - which of the standard threats are mitigated/do not apply? - which are still

relevant, but reduced by the study design? - which are open and major threats to validity?


Yin [24] states that construct validity deals with “establishing correct operational mea-sures for the concepts being studied”. This type of validity is concern with the relationship

between the research theories and the observations.

The variables designed in this survey include both open and closed-ended questions. For

each close-ended question for a particular forum, a comprehensive search was conducted

to find evidence of top n values for the forum in question. For example, the top 11 list of

software engineering journals was obtained from Chalmers University site. 3.

Since the survey is dealing with multi-continental coverage of software practitioners with

different language levels and backgrounds, words can be misinterpreted by participants. To

avoid this risk, multiple review of the questionnaire was conducted with the help of supervi-

sor and master degree colleagues, where questions were discussed and modified, if needed

to ensure simplicity, cohesion and clarity.

Another possible risk is that of hypothesis guessing/respondent bias. The respondents

may try to guess what the researchers want and answer questions based on what they feel the

researcher wants to achieve. But, it is evident that more than half of the survey respondents

have undergone academic education (bachelors and masters) and must have learnt about

academic honesty. However, this threat cannot be completely disregarded.

Internal validity is concern with investigating whether a causal relationship exist between

treatment and outcome. Other factors may have a considerable impact to this relationship.

These factors are called confounding factors. The less chance for confounding factors the

higher the internal validity becomes.

In this study, the Likert scale was used to quantify the frequency and awareness level of

respondents. It has been noted that a lack of a categorised definition of what each item in the

scale represent is an issue of concern with our results. For example, what is the difference

between "very rarely" and "rarely". This issue has been noted after the survey was conducted.

A quantified definition of the difference between the two could have provided a more reliable

result. There is also a considerable implicate in making this categorisation. This will mean

prejudging the amount of journals or books read by practitioners. Our judgement of the

categorization may seriously affect our grouping, since we do not known how often they use

these forums, which is pre-judgemental. After conducting the survey, it has been noted that it

would have been better to define the Likert scale in quantified categories to assess responses

answering the rate of frequency. This is a major threat our research results. This will be

addressed in future works of this paper.

External Validity is describes to what extend the result of this study can be extended to

other situations not investigated.

The design of this study has tried to address this issue by distributing the survey link

to all software engineering forums and groups to be able to gather enough information and

responses. A near-randomized sampling method has been used to search for software prac-

titioners worldwide. This can be confirmed by the intercontinental responses obtained from

software practitioners worldwide. This may indicate a considerable amount of generalization

of the results can be considered.

It should be noted that nearly half of the respondents are software architect and devel-

3 Source of journal list: http://www.cse.chalmers.se/~feldt/advice/isi_listed_se_journals.html


opers. Thus, they represent a higher representation than other type of software engineering

roles.

Conclusion Validity is concerned to what extend the data and analysis are related. In case

another researcher repeats the same type of study to what extend it will be the same.

Poor interpretation of data by researchers can be a risk. A systematic process of iden-

tifying best known and least known forums were performed and documented. The criteria

used to make this judgement has been well described for all forums when presenting results.

Such example is that the best known journal is identified by the least number of journals that

had options of "I do not know this journal". Special attention needs to be given to this when

another researcher tries to replicate the study.

Poor documentation of the study process can also be a risk replicating the study in the

future. To mitigate this risk the survey is documented and reviewed by researchers from

Blekinge Institute of Technology.

Chapter 5Results

This section presents comprehensive results obtained from the survey. This is organised in

two parts to answer the research questions stated in Section 4.1. The first part presents the

results of how frequently a particular knowledge platform is accessed. This is calculated by

the summation of all responses that had "always", "very frequently", "occasionally", "rarely"

or "very rarely". This variable in this paper is called "at least very rarely". The second part

presents the awareness level of the forum been examine. This is judged by the number of "i

do not known the forum". The forum with the least "i do not know the forum" is the best

known forum, whilst the highest "I do not know the forum" is the least known forum.

However, the demographics of the participants are initially presented to build a context

and scope of the respondents.

5.1 Respondents DemographicsThe survey received 85 responses from 29 countries worldwide. Most respondents originated

from Europe and The United States, majority have between one to fifteen years of work

experience (75%). More than half of the respondents are bachelor (41%) and master (34%)

graduates with only four PhD (4%) and 29 high school (20%) respondents. In terms of

roles, software developers (42%) and software architect (22%) are mostly represented in this

survey.

5.2 Results OutlineFor the sake of clarify Table 5.1 describes the variables names that have been used to repre-

sent names of scientific journals and meetings in this paper. Here upon, we will present the

results of seven different knowledge forums or platforms where software practitioners can

access new or advanced scientific knowledge. The forums examined in this survey are sci-

entific journals, scientific meetings, magazines, social media, blogs, video tutorial and book

publications. The results are presented as follows.

13

Chapter 5. Results 14

Table 5.1: List of the Variable Names and Their Descriptions.Variable Name Description

IEEE Comp IEEE Computer.

CACM Communications of the ACM.

TSE IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

TOSEM ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology.

IEEE SW IEEE Software.

ASE Automated Software Engineering.

SQJ Software Quality Journal.

IST Information and Software Technology.

JSS Journal of Systems and Software.

REJ Requirements Engineering Journal.

ESEJ Empirical Software Engineering.

OOPSLA ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages and Applications.

ICSE International Conference on Software Engineering.

ASE IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering.

ESEM International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement.

ICSR International Conference on Software Reuse.

ESEC European Software Engineering Conference.

RE IEEE International Conference on Requirements Engineering.

5.3 Scientific JournalsAlmost all new and advanced scientific knowledge are aimed at publishing results to the

scientific community through periodic journal publications. The results of the survey inves-

tigate the frequency of access to scientific journal and the level of awareness the respondents

have towards the presented list of journals.

Table 5.2 shows how often practitioners access scientific journals, as well as whether

they know the journals.

Frequency of Access to Journals: It is visible that a maximum of six respondents are

reading a specific scientific journal at least occasionally, while among all selected journals

there is none that is not read by practitioners at all. We further analyzed whether the journals

are read by different people, or whether they are the same. If they are the same, then overall

this indicates that scientific journals are only read by few practitioners. We found that most

practitioners who read specific journals are the same that also read other well known journals.

This suggest that few number (4 out of 85) of the respondents occasionally read scientific

journals.

Looking at all answers of respondents reading journals at least very rarely, the most

frequently accessed journals could be ranked. These are:

• IEEE Comp (19 respondents in 85)

• CACM (18 respondents in 85)

• TSE (17 respondents in 85)

Journal Awareness: The access of journals requires awareness about them. The journals

best known are indicated by the lowest number of responses on the item “I do not know the

scientific publication”. The range of people not knowing a specific journal ranges from 30

to 45 out of 85 respondents.


Table 5.2: Software Practitioners access to Scientific Journals.Journal name Measure Always Very Frequently Occasionally I Don’t Know Rarely Very Rarely Never

IEEE Comp

Abs 2 3 33 5 9 33

Percent 2,35 3,53 38,82 5,88 10,59 38,82

CACM

Abs 1 5 30 7 5 37

Percent 1,18 5,88 35,29 8,24 5,88 43,53

TSE

Abs 5 32 2 10 36

Percent 5,88 37,65 2,35 11,76 42,35

TOSEM

Abs 1 2 34 6 7 35

Percent 1,18 2,35 40 7,06 8,24 41,18

IEEE SW

Abs 1 5 33 4 5 37

Percent 1,18 5,88 38,82 4,71 5,88 43,53

ASE

Abs 2 1 44 1 7 30

Percent 2,35 1,18 51,76 1,18 8,24 35,29

SQJ

Abs 1 2 2 43 1 5 31

Percent 1,18 2,35 2,35 50,59 1,18 5,88 36,47

IST

Abs 1 4 39 1 4 36

Percent 1,18 4,71 45,88 1,18 4,71 42,35

JSS

Abs 3 40 1 5 36

Percent 3,53 47,06 1,18 5,88 42,35

REJ

Abs 1 2 1 45 1 3 32

Percent 1,18 2,35 1,18 52,94 1,18 3,53 37,65

ESEJ

Abs 2 1 4 32 46

Percent 2,35 1,18 4,71 37,65 54,12

The top three best known journals are:

• CACM (30 respondents in 85)

• TSE (32 respondents in 85)

• IEEE Comp or SW (33 respondents in 85)

The least known journals are:

• REJ (45 respondents in 85)

• ASE (44 respondents in 85)

• SQJ (43 respondents in 85)


Figure 5.1: Software practitioners access of journals based on level of education.

Level of Education

In the section, we will investigate whether the factor level of education has an effect on the

frequency of accessing journals.

Given that 11 journals are considered, the maximum number that could be achieved on a

rating item (e.g. always) are 11 (number of journals) multiply by the Number of graduates.

Hence, the relative distribution of answers is visible from the distribution shown in Figure

5.1.

It is visible that overall relative distribution of answers shows that bachelor and master

graduates most often use journals. Whilst high school and PhD very sporadically use jour-

nals. Item 8 of the graph clearly shows that there is a difference between these two groups

in terms of frequency of use of journals.

Year of Graduation

In the section, we will investigate whether the factor year of graduation has an effect on the

frequency of accessing journals.

Given that 11 journals are considered, the maximum number that could be achieved on a

rating item (e.g. always) are 11 (number of journals) multiply by the Number of respondent’s

year of graduation. Hence, the relative distribution of answers is visible from the distribution

shown in Figure 5.2.

It is visible that overall relative distribution of answers shows that respondents who grad-

uated between 2010-now most often access journals compared to other categories. While

those who graduated between 1990 to 2009 use journals very sporadically.

Role

In the section, we will investigate whether the factor role has an effect on the frequency of

accessing journals.


Figure 5.2: Software practitioners access to journals based on Year of Graduation.

Given that 11 journals are considered, the maximum number that could be achieved on

a rating item (e.g. always) are 11 (number of journals) multiply by the Number of respon-

dents with a particular role. Hence, the relative distribution of answers is visible from the

distribution shown in Figure 5.3.

It is visible that overall relative distribution of answers shows that software architects

and developers (G2 and G3) most often use journals. Whilst, GUI and Interaction Designers

(G4 and G5) are roles that do not often use journals. This can be accepted since GUI and

interaction designers do not often need to search for very technical knowledge. Item 8 of

the graph clearly shows that there is a difference between the role of software architect and

developers (G2 and G3) compared to other software engineering roles in the frequency of

use of journals.

5.4 Scientific MeetingsAn interactive medium scientist get to share and disseminate their new research findings

is through conferences, seminars and proceedings. The results of survey investigate the

frequency of attending scientific meetings and the level of awareness the respondents have

towards the presented list of scientific meetings.

Table 5.3 shows how often practitioners attend scientific meetings, as well as whether

they know the presented meetings.

Frequency of Access of Meetings: It can observed that a maximum of seven respondents

attended at least occasionally scientific meetings. Further analysis indicate that two among

them attended more than four scientific meetings and they were Bachelor graduates. In

addition, all the listed meetings have been attended occasionally by at least a respondent.


Figure 5.3: Software practitioners access to journals based on Roles.

Examining all the responses of practitioners attending scientific meetings at least very

rarely, the most attended scientific meeting is ranked at follows:

• OOPSLA (18 respondents in 85)

• ICSE(8 respondents in 85)


Meeting Awareness: Meetings are well attended if participants know about them. From

the results of the survey, We can identify the best known meeting by examining the lowest

number of responses with the answers "I don’t known the scientific meeting". The range of

people not knowing a specific meeting ranges from 28 to 45 respondents out of 85.

the top three best known meetings are:

• OOPSLA (28 respondents in 85)

• ICSE (38 respondents in 85)

• ESEC (41 respondents in 85)

The least known meetings are:

• ESEM (45 respondents in 85)

• ICSR (44 respondents in 85)



Table 5.3: Software Practitioners access to Scientific Meetings.Meeting Name Measure Always Very frequently Occasionally I don’t Know Rarely Very Rarely Never

OOPSLA

Abs 1 6 28 4 7 39

Percent 1.18 7,06 32,94 4,71 8,24 45,88

ICSE

Abs 2 38 6 39

Percent 2,35 44,71 7,06 45,88

ASE

Abs 1 43 5 36

Percent 1,18 50,59 5,88 42,35

ESEM

Abs 1 45 4 35

Percent 1,18 52,94 4,71 41,18

ICSR

Abs 1 44 4 36

Percent 1,18 51,76 4,71 42,35

ESEC

Abs 2 41 3 39

Percent 2,35 48,24 3,53 45,88

RE

Abs 1 42 1 2 39

Percent 1,18 49,41 1,18 2,35 45,88

Level of Education


frequency of attending meetings.

Given that 7 meetings are considered, the maximum number that could be achieved on a

rating item (e.g. always) are 7 (number of meetings) multiply by the Number of graduates.


5.4.


graduates most often attend scientific meetings. Whilst high school and PhD attend consider-

ably less scientific meetings according to results. Item 8 of the graph clearly shows that there

is a considerable difference between bachelor and master graduates compared to high school

and PhD graduates in attending scientific meetings according to the results of the survey.

Year of Graduation



Given that 7 meetings are considered, the maximum number that could be achieved on a

rating item (e.g. always) are 7 (number of meetings) multiply by the Number of respondent’s



It is visible that overall relative distribution of answers shows that respondents who attend

meetings graduated between 1990-now. While those who graduated before the 1990 rarely

attend scientific meetings according to the results.


Figure 5.4: Software practitioners access to meetings based on level of education.

Figure 5.5: Software practitioners access to Meetings based on Year of Graduation.


Figure 5.6: Software practitioners access to Meetings based on Roles.

Role


attending meetings.

Given that 7 meetings are considered, the maximum number that could be achieved on

a rating item (e.g. always) are 7 (number of meetings) multiply by the Number of respon-

dents with a particular role. Hence, the relative distribution of answers is visible from the

distribution shown in Figure 5.6.

It is visible that overall relative distribution of answers shows that software architects and

developers (G2 and G3) most often attend scientific meetings and this is mostly very rarely.

Item 8 of the graph clearly shows that there is a difference between the role of software

architect and developers (G2 and G3) compared to other software engineering roles in the


5.5 MagazinesMagazines are knowledge dissemination forum which is common to most professions. The

last decade has seen a great number of software focused magazine discussing new and ad-

vance software products and services. The results of the survey investigate software practi-

tioners frequency of reading magazines and the level of awareness they have concerning the

listed magazines.

Table 5.4 shows how often practitioners read magazines and to what level they are aware

of the presented list of magazines.

Frequency of Access to Magazines: The results indicate that a maximum of 24 respon-

dents read at least occasionally magazines. All the listed magazines were occasionally read

by practitioners.

Examining the respondents who at least very rarely read magazines in Table 5.4 we can


Table 5.4: Software Practitioners Access to IT Magazines.IT Magazine Measure Always Very Frequently Occasionally I don’t Know Rarely Very Rarely Never

Wired

Abs 3 4 17 5 10 19 27

Percent 3,53 4,71 20 5,88 11,76 22,35 31,76

PcWorld

Abs 1 2 3 8 5 15 51

Percent 1,18 2,35 3,53 9,41 5,88 17,65 60

PcMagazine

Abs 1 1 5 12 3 13 50

Percent 1,18 1,18 5,88 14,12 3,53 15,29 58,82

MacWorld

Abs 1 2 5 11 3 11 52

Percent 1,18 2,35 5,88 12,94 3,53 12,94 61,18

TechnologyReview

Abs 2 2 5 24 3 5 44

Percent 2,35 2,35 5,88 28,24 3,53 5,88 51,76

CIO

Abs 5 2 29 4 45

Percent 5,88 2,35 34,12 4,71 52,94

WindowsItPro

Abs 2 1 27 2 5 48

Percent 2,35 1,18 31,76 2,35 5,88 56,47

MaximumPC

Abs 1 2 31 1 4 46

Percent 1,18 2,35 36,47 1,18 4,71 54,12

SmartComputing

Abs 2 34 2 1 46

Percent 2,35 40 2,35 1,18 54,12

rank the most frequently read magazines. These are:

• Wired (53 respondents in 85)

• PC World (26 respondents in 85)

• PC Magazine (23 respondents in 85)

Magazine Awareness: Magazines requires popularity to sell well. The best known mag-

azines are indicated by the lowest number of responses on the item "I do not know the maga-

zine". The range of people not knowing a specific magazine ranges from 5 to 34 respondents.

The top three known magazines are:

• Wired (5 respondents in 85)

• PC World (8 respondents in 85)

• Mac World (11 respondents in 85)

The least known magazines are:

• Smart Computing (34 respondents in 85)

• Maximum PC (31 respondents in 85)

• CIO (29 respondents in 85)


Figure 5.7: Software practitioners access to IT magazines based on Level of Education.

Level of Education


frequency of reading IT magazines.

Given that 9 IT magazines are considered, the maximum number that could be achieved

on a rating item (e.g. always) are 9 (number of IT Magazines) multiply by the Number of

graduates. Hence, the relative distribution of answers is visible from the distribution shown

in Figure 5.7.


graduates most often read IT magazines. Whilst high school and PhD very sporadically read

IT magazines. Item 8 of the graph clearly shows that there is a difference which indicates that

bachelor and master graduates use more often IT magazines than other degrees of education.

Year of Graduation


frequency of reading IT magazines.


on a rating item (e.g. always) are 9 (number of IT magazines) multiply by the Number of

respondent’s year of graduation. Hence, the relative distribution of answers is visible from

the distribution shown in Figure 5.8.


uated between 2010-now most often read IT Magazines than other categories. While those

who graduated between 1990 to 2009 also read IT magazines but less often than recent grad-

uates.

Role


reading IT magazines.


Figure 5.8: Software practitioners access to IT Magazines based on Year of Graduation.


on a rating item (e.g. always) are 9 (number of IT magazines) multiply by the Number of

respondents with a particular role. Hence, the relative distribution of answers is visible from



developers (G2 and G3) roles most often read IT magazines. Whilst, GUI and Interaction

Designers (G4 and G5) are roles that do not often read IT magazines. Item 8 of the graph

clearly shows that there is a difference between the role of software architect and develop-

ers (G2 and G3) in comparison with other software engineering roles on the reading of IT

magazines.

5.6 Social MediaSocial media involves the sharing of experience and knowledge between participants in a

social network. This could a vital forum where practitioners can share new and advanced

scientific knowledge. The results of the survey investigate how frequent practitioners use

social media and the level of awareness they have on the presented list of social media sites.

Table 5.5 shows how often practitioners use social media, as well as the level of awareness

of presented social media sites.

Frequency of Access to Social Media: It is visible that a maximum of 68 respondents

are using social media at least occasionally. All the listed social media are used at least by

a respondent. Nearly half of the respondents at least occasionally use social media to share

scientific knowledge.

Examining all the results in Table 5.5 of at least very rarely. The most frequent access

social media will be as follows:


Figure 5.9: Software practitioners access to IT Magazines based on Roles.

• Wikipedia (82 respondents in 85)

• Twitter (70 respondents in 85)

• Google+ (59 respondents in 85)

Social Media Awareness: In this forum we can’t use the lowest number of responses

of "I don’t know social media" because almost all respondents know all the listed social

media sites. An alternative method will be to use the item "never" to rank the best known

social media. The range of people who never used a specific social media ranges from 3

to 44 respondents. The top three best known social media for accessing new and advanced

scientific knowledge are:

• Wikipedia (3 respondents in 85)

• Twitter (15 respondents in 85)

• Google+ (26 respondents in 85)

The least known social media for accessing new and advanced scientific knowledge are:

• Facebook (44 respondents in 85)

• Linkedin (38 respondents in 85)

• Meetup (29 respondents in 85)


Table 5.5: Software Practitioners Access to Social Media.Social Media Measure Always Very Frequently Occasionally I don’t know Rarely Very Rarely Never

Wikipedia

Abs 11 27 30 10 4 3

Percent 12,94 31,76 35,29 11,76 4,71 3,53

Twitter

Abs 11 31 11 6 11 15

Percent 12,94 36,47 12,94 7,06 12,94

Google+

Abs 3 10 14 18 14 26

Percent 3,53 11,76 16,47 21,18 16,47 30,59

Linkedin

Abs 2 3 9 13 20 38

Percent 2,35 3,53 10,59 15,29 23,53 44,71

Meetup

Abs 1 7 11 15 8 14 29

Percent 1,18 8,24 12,94 17.65 9,41 16,47 34,12

Facebook

Abs 2 4 5 19 11 44

Percent 2,35 4,71 5,88 22,35 12,94 51,76

Level of Education


frequency of accessing social media.

Given that 6 social media are considered, the maximum number that could be achieved

on a rating item (e.g. always) are 6 (number of social media) multiply by the Number of


in Figure 5.10.


graduates most often use social media. Whilst, bachelor also considerably use social media

in searching for new scientific knowledge. Item 8 of the graph clearly shows that there is a

considerable difference in social media usage of bachelor and master graduates compared to

other degrees of education.

Year of Graduation


frequency of accessing social media.






uated between 2000 up to now most often use social media with a good number of those

who graduated between 1990-1999. While those who graduated before 1990 use least social

media in searching for scientific knowledge.


Figure 5.10: Software practitioners access to social media based on level of education.

Figure 5.11: Software practitioners access to Social Media based on Year of Graduation.


Figure 5.12: Software practitioners access to Social Media based on Roles.

Role


accessing social media.






developers (G2 and G3) most often use social media. Whilst, other roles do not often use

social media in searching for new and advanced scientific knowledge. Item 8 of the graph

clearly shows that there is a considerable difference between the role of software architect

and developers (G2 and G3) compared to other software engineering roles in the frequency

of access to social media for searching for new and advanced scientific knowledge.

5.7 Book PublishersSoftware engineering publisher books have been a long source of knowledge for software

practitioners for many decades. It is used to learn many new programming languages and

software development methodologies. The result of the survey examine the frequency of

access of publisher books and the awareness level of software practitioners in the presented

list of book publishers.

Table 5.6 shows how often software practitioners access publisher books, as well as how

aware they are about them.


Table 5.6: Software Practitioners Access to Book Publishers.Book Publisher Measure Always Very Frequently Occasionally I don’t know Rarely Very Rarely Never

Oreilly

Abs 6 14 36 5 6 8 10

Percent 7,06 16,47 42,35 5,88 7,06 9,41 11,76

AddWesley

Abs 5 7 26 12 8 12 15

Percent 5,88 8,24 30,59 14,12 9,41 14,12 17,65

MitPress

Abs 3 2 23 7 16 13 21

Percent 3,53 2,35 27,06 8,24 18,82 15,29 24,71

Apress

Abs 3 2 27 16 10 14 13

Percent 3,53 2,35 31,76 18,82 11,76 16,47 15,29

PrenticeHall

Abs 4 3 18 17 14 12 17

Percent 4,71 3,53 21,18 20 16,47 14,12 20

MicrosoftPress

Abs 1 3 13 9 13 18 28

Percent 1,18 3,53 15,29 10,59 15,29 21,18 32,94

Springer

Abs 2 4 11 24 6 16 22

Percent 2,35 4,71 12,94 28,24 7,06 18,82 25,88

Frequency of Access to Book Publishers: It is observed that a maximum of 56 respon-

dents are using book publishers at least occasionally. All the listed book publishers are read

occasionally at least by 17 respondents.

Observing all the results in Table 5.6 of at least very rarely. The most frequently access

publisher books are as follows:

• Oreilly (70 respondents in 85)

• Addison Wesley (58 respondents in 85)

• MitPress (57 respondents in 85)

Awareness Level of Book Publishers: Publisher books have been well known for shar-

ing new and advance scientific knowledge. The best known publisher book are indicated by

the lowest number of responses of the item "I don’t know the Book Publisher". The range of

people of not knowing a specific publisher book ranges from 5 to 24 respondents. The top

three best known book publishers are:

• Oreilly (5 respondents in 85)

• MitPress (7 respondents in 85)

• MicrosoftPress (9 respondents in 85)

The least known publisher books according to the survey are:

• Springer (24 respondents in 85)

• PrenticeHall (17 respondents in 85)

• Apress (16 respondents in 85)


Figure 5.13: Software practitioners access to Publisher books based on level of education.

Level of Education


frequency of reading publisher books.

Given that 7 book publishers are considered, the maximum number that could be achieved

on a rating item (e.g. always) are 7 (number of book publishers) multiply by the Number of


in Figure 5.13.


graduates most often read publisher books. Whilst, high school and PhD very sporadically

read publisher books according to the results of the survey. Item 8 of the graph clearly shows

that there is a considerable difference of bachelor and master graduates compared to other

degrees. PhD represent the least usage of publisher books according to the results.

Year of Graduation


frequency of reading publisher books.






uated between 2000-2009 most often read publisher books followed by those who graduated

between 2010-now and 1990-1999 respectively. While those who graduated between before

1990 read publisher books least according to the results.


Figure 5.14: Software practitioners access to Publisher Books based on Year of Graduation.

Role


reading publisher books.





It is visible that overall relative distribution of answers shows that requirement engineers,

system analyst, product managers, software architects and developers (G1, G2 and G3) most

often read publisher books. Whilst, other roles do not sporadically read publisher books.

Item 8 of the graph clearly shows that there is a difference between the role of G1, G2

and G3 compared to other software engineering roles on the frequency of reading publisher

books for searching for new and advanced knowledge.

5.8 Video TutorialsIn recent decades video tutorials have turn out to be very valuable in sharing knowledge both

in academics and industry. The result of the survey investigate the use of video tutorials and

the level of awareness by the software practitioners.

Table 5.7 reveals how often software practitioners watch video tutorials, as well as how

aware they are about them.

Frequency of Access to Video tutorials:It is noticeable that a maximum of 56 respondents are using video tutorials at least occa-

sionally. All the listed video tutorials are watch occasionally at least by 3 respondents.


Figure 5.15: Software practitioners access to Publisher Books based on Roles.

Observing all the results in Table 5.7 of at least very rarely. The most frequently watch

video tutorials are as follows:

• Youtube (78 respondents in 85)

• Kahn (30 respondents in 85)

• Lynda (20 respondents in 85)

Awareness Level of video tutorials: Video tutorials are common for sharing new and

advance knowledge. The best known video tutorials are indicated by the lowest number of

"I don’t Know This Video Tutorials". The range of people not knowing a specific video

tutorials ranges from 0 to 44 respondents. The top three best known video tutorials are:

• Youtube (0 respondents in 85)

• Kahn (16 respondents in 85)

• Lynda (33 respondents in 85)

The least known video tutorials according to the survey are:

• TubeTutorial (44 respondents in 85)

• VideoTutes (44 respondents in 85)

• TvAdobe (39 respondents in 85)


Table 5.7: Software Practitioners Access to Video Tutorials.VideoTutorial Measure Always Very Frequently Occasionally I don’t know Rarely Very Rarely 6-Never

Youtube

Abs 7 14 35 0 15 7 7

Percent 8,24 16,47 41,18 0 17,65 8,24 8,24

Kahn

Abs 1 3 7 16 8 11 39

Percent 1,18 3,53 8,24 18,82 9,41 12,94 45,88

Lynda

Abs 1 4 33 8 7 32

Percent 1,18 4,71 38,82 9,41 8,24 37,65

Udemy

Abs 1 1 4 33 2 10 34

Percent 1,18 1,18 4,71 38,82 2,35 11,76 40

TvAdobe

Abs 1 2 39 1 8 34

Percent 1,18 2,35 45,88 1,18 9,41 40

VideoTutes

Abs 2 3 44 1 4 31

Percent 2,35 3,53 51,76 1,18 4,71 36,47

TubeTutorial

Abs 1 1 2 44 2 3 32

Percent 1,18 1,18 2,35 51,76 2,35 3,53 37,65

Level of Education


frequency of watching video tutorials.

Given that 7 video tutorials are considered, the maximum number that could be achieved

on a rating item (e.g. always) are 7 (number of video tutorials) multiply by the Number of


in Figure 5.16.


graduates most often watch video tutorials. Whilst high school and PhD graduates use them

very sporadically. Item 8 of the graph clearly shows that mostly master graduates followed

by bachelor and high school graduates.

Year of Graduation


frequency of watching video tutorials.






uated between 2000 up to now most often watch video tutorial to learn scientific knowledge.

While those who graduated before 1990 least use video tutorials. Those who graduated

between 1990-1999 also use video tutorial considerably.


Figure 5.16: Software practitioners access to video tutorials based on level of education.

Figure 5.17: Software practitioners access to video tutorials based on Year of Graduation.


Figure 5.18: Software practitioners access to video tutorials based on Roles.

Role


watching video tutorials.






developers (G2 and G3) most often watch video tutorials. Whilst, other roles less often watch

video tutorials. Item 8 of the graph clearly shows that there is a difference between the role

of software architect and developers (G2 and G3) compared to other software engineering

roles in the frequency of watching video tutorials for searching new and advanced scientific

knowledge.

5.9 BlogsThe expansion of knowledge sharing using the Internet has introduced by personalised web-

sites which encourage on-line collaboration and knowledge sharing. The result of the survey

investigate the frequency of using blogs and the level of the awareness the respondents have

on the presented list of blogs.

Table 5.8 shows how often software practitioners access blogs, as well as how aware they

are about them.

Frequency of Access to Blogs: From the survey, it is observed that a maximum of 63

respondents are using blogs at least occasionally. All the listed blogs are access occasionally

at least by 7 respondents.


Table 5.8: Software Practitioners Access to Blogs.Blog Measure Always Very Frequently Occasionally I don’t know Rarely Very Rarely Never

GitHub

Abs 20 24 19 1 5 4 12

Percent 23,53 28,24 22,35 1,18 5,88 4,71 14,12

CondingHorror

Abs 7 8 27 12 11 9 11

Percent 8,24 9,41 31,76 14,12 12,94 10,59 12,94

JoelOnSoft

Abs 5 5 17 18 15 15 10

Percent 5,88 5,88 20 21,18 17,65 17,65 11,76

ThoughtWorks

Abs 1 10 10 22 9 14 19

Percent 1,18 11,76 11,76 25,88 10,59 16,47 22,35

CodeBetter

Abs 4 5 9 33 4 10 20

Percent 4,71 5,88 10,59 38,82 4,71 11,76 23,53

CrossValidated

Abs 2 1 5 46 3 6 22

Percent 2,35 1,18 5,88 54,12 3,53 7,06 25,88

AllAboutAgile

Abs 1 2 4 47 3 5 23

Percent 1,18 2,35 4,71 55,29 3,53 5,88 27,06

BlogUtest

Abs 1 2 4 51 1 3 23

Percent 1,18 2,35 4,71 60 1,18 3,53 27,06

Observing all the results in Table 5.8 of at least very rarely. The most frequently access

blogs are as follows:

• GitHub (72 respondents in 85)

• CondingHorror (62 respondents in 85)

• JoelOnSoft (57 respondents in 85)

Awareness Level of Blogs:Blogs are use frequently by practitioners in sharing and collaborating new knowledge.

The best known blogs are indicated by the lowest number of "I don’t Know This Blog". The

range of people not knowing a specific blog ranges from 1 to 51 respondents. The top three

best known blogs are:

• GitHub (1 respondents in 85)

• CondingHorror (12 respondents in 85)

• JoelOnSoft (18 respondents in 85)

The least known blogs according to the survey are:

• BlogUtest (51 respondents in 85)

• AllAboutAgile (47 respondents in 85)

• CrossValidated (46 respondents in 85)


Figure 5.19: Software practitioners access to blogs based on level of education.

Level of Education


frequency of accessing blogs.

Given that 8 blogs are considered, the maximum number that could be achieved on a

rating item (e.g. always) are 8 (number of blogs) multiply by the Number of graduates.


5.19.


graduates most often use blogs. Whilst PhD very sporadically use blogs. Item 8 of the graph

clearly shows that there is a difference indicating that high school, bachelor and master

graduates use blogs in searching for new and advanced scientific knowledge according to the

results.

Year of Graduation


frequency of accessing blogs.


rating item (e.g. always) are 8 (number of blogs) multiply by the Number of respondent’s




uated from 1990 to now most often use blogs to search for new scientific knowledge. Those

who graduated between 2000-2009 use them more often. While those who graduated before

1990 use them the least.


Figure 5.20: Software practitioners access to blogs based on Year of Graduation.

Role


accessing blogs.


rating item (e.g. always) are 8 (number of blogs) multiply by the Number of respondents with

a particular role. Hence, the relative distribution of answers is visible from the distribution



developers (G2 and G3) most often use blogs. Whilst other roles that use less often blogs.

Item 8 of the graph clearly shows that there is a difference between the role of software

architect and developers (G2 and G3) compared to other software engineering roles on the

frequency of use blogs in searching for new and advanced scientific knowledge.

5.10 Forum UsefulnessDifferent types of knowledge dissemination platforms are helping practitioners to access

new and advance scientific knowledge. The result of the survey investigate the usefulness of

using the different knowledge dissemination platforms.

Table 5.9 shows how useful forums are in improving software practitioners professional

activities.

Using the data representation (Agree, Undecided, Disagree), Figure 5.23 clearly shows

that book publishers (64, 8, 13), blogs (82, 1, 4), video tutorials (56, 17, 12) and social media

(56, 15, 14) are considerably agreed by the respondents to be very useful for improving their

professional activities. In addition, scientific journals (13, 27, 45) and meetings (27, 15,

43) are disagreed to be very useful for their activities. Magazine (35, 15, 35) are uniformly

agrees and disagreed to be very useful.


Figure 5.21: Software practitioners access to Blogs based on Roles.

Figure 5.22: Comparison of forums based on usages by Software practitioners.


Table 5.9: Software Practitioners Access of several forums to improve activity.Forums Improve Activity Measure Strongly Agree Agree Undecided Disagree Strongly Disagree

Blogs

Abs 45 37 1 2

Percent 52,94 43,53 1,18 2,35

Publisher

Abs 35 29 8 9 4

Percent 41,18 34,12 9,41 10,59 4,71

SocialMedia

Abs 21 35 15 12 2

Percent 24,71 41,18 17,65 14,12 2,35

VideoTutorial

Abs 16 40 17 8 4

Percent 18,82 47,06 20 9,41 4,71

Magazines

Abs 6 29 15 18 17

Percent 7,06 34,12 17,65 21,18 20

Meetings

Abs 3 24 15 20 23

Percent 3,53 28,24 17,65 23,53 27,06

Journals

Abs 1 12 27 15 30

Percent 1,18 14,12 31,76 17,65 35,29

Figure 5.23: Software practitioners access of different forums to improve activity.

Chapter 6Analysis

Academic researchers in Software Engineering are mostly focused on publishing their re-

search findings in scientific journals or meetings. It is not clear how software practitioners

use these new and advanced scientific knowledge in software engineering.

To address this knowledge gap, we identified seven forums of sharing knowledge. These

are scientific journals, scientific meetings, magazines, social media, video tutorial, blogs and

book publishers.

A survey was conducted using Likert scale to understand how frequently and what level

of awareness software practitioners have concerning these forums.

Eighty five responses were obtained worldwide from at least all software engineering

roles ranging from requirement engineers, product managers, software analyst, software ar-

chitects, software developers, database designers, to software testers. Most of whom were

had the role of software developers or architects.

The responses of the participants indicate that blogs, book publishers, video tutorial and

social media are forums where they gain new or advanced scientific knowledge. The results

show empirical evidence that software practitioners mostly use these forums in addressing

their professional and social related activities. And most often will not need to use very

academic forums which tend to be research focus, such as scientific journals and meetings.

Most often software practitioners try to address real world problems with close to well known

solutions relating to the changing business environment. Which is nearly opposite to how

academic research works. Academic research is involved in a progressively slow and time

taking process which try to address, most often, small research gaps that exist in scientific

research. Whilst, business environment try to find quick solutions to fast and dynamic envi-

ronment.

A significant number of software practitioners are employed by business organisation.

The latter are mostly profit or value-oriented towards the business goals of the organisation.

They are mostly bound by government regulations which are not always ethical or moral.

This freedom gives them the chance not to follow strict rules of operations. In contrast to

academic forums where you have to follow strict rules to ensure academic honesty, ethics

and morals.

Since academic researchers and software practitioners are mostly working on two dissim-

ilar operating environments. It can be said, that is why software practitioners will not often

use scientific journals and meetings to search for new and advanced research knowledge.

Software practitioners have less time to read long scientific documents to find solutions.

They need simplified explanations and examples to explore their targeted solutions. They

41

Chapter 6. Analysis 42

do not have much time to read long scientific papers to find a solution to their problem.

Meanwhile, scientific journals and meetings can be very lucrative environment for software

practitioners in gaining new research finding that can greatly assist them in their professional

activities. Further investigations could identify the reasons why these forums are not often

used by the practitioners. Is it financial cost attached to them (i.e. travel fee, monthly sub-

scriptions etc.) or is just that the professional activities of academic researcher and software

practitioners do not significantly relate?

Meanwhile, analysis of the survey results indicate that academic researchers should make

an effort in disseminating their research findings in the form of video, blogs or social media

sites. This exposes their work to knowledge forums which software practitioners mostly

use. Thus, giving them the chances to explore the use of many new and advanced research

findings.

Chapter 7Conclusions and Future Work

We conducted a survey of software practitioners posted on LinkedIn, Yahoo, Facebook,

Google+, Meetup and Google groups. The survey contained demographics information,

seven types of forums of sharing knowledge and how important respondents felt these forums

influenced their professional activities. The following answers to the research questions are

presented.

7.1 ConclusionsRQ1: Which types of knowledge dissemination platforms are currently used by the

software practitioners to gain new and advanced scientific knowledge? With a com-

prehensive clustering of knowledge sharing platforms the following forums were identified:

Scientific journals, scientific meetings, magazines, social media, video tutorials, blogs and

book publishers.

RQ2: How often software practitioners are looking for new and advanced scientificknowledge that relate to software engineering in research?

To quantify how often software practitioners use a particular forum, we have computed

the respondents that answered "always", "very frequently", "occasionally", "rarely" or "very

rarely" to understand how frequent software practitioners use these forums. Figure 5.22 in-

dicates that software practitioners most often use blogs (97%), publisher books (75%), video

tutorial (66%), and social media (66%). Whilst journals (15%) and meetings (32%) are less

used by software practitioners in searching for new and advanced scientific knowledge.

RQ3: Which types of knowledge dissemination platforms are the most useful sourcesof new and advanced scientific knowledge from the view point of software practition-ers? The results of the survey suggest that Blogs, Book Publishers, Video Tutorial and Social

Media are significant forums of sharing new and advance scientific knowledge for software

practitioners. Whilst, IT magazines, scientific journals and meetings are not very significant

forums for them in gaining new and advanced scientific knowledge.

43

Chapter 7. Conclusions and Future Work 44

7.2 Future Work:Further investigations of are needed to understand why software practitioners are not access

often journals and meetings. Is it because of financial issues related to these two forums of

sharing knowledge (i.e. travel fee, monthly subscription etc.)? or is it the length of time it

takes to read academic journals or attend scientific meetings? or is it just that the professional

activities do not significantly relate to hard core academic research?

Further data mining investigations can be conducted using the valuable data collected in

this survey to mine for hidden information using cluster analysis techniques.

7.3 RecommendationTo ease the access of new and advanced scientific knowledge to software practitioners, aca-

demic researchers should also present their research findings in the form of video tutorials or

blogs or social media. This will give easier access of their new research findings to software

practitioners. Academic researchers should represent findings in the form of blogs, videos

and social media when publishing/packaging their research.

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Appendices

47

Appendix AAppendix

Figure A.1: Survey Introduction Section Design.

48

Appendix A. Appendix 49

Figure A.2: Demographic Questionnaire Design.

Figure A.3: Journal Questionnaire Design.


Figure A.4: Meeting Questionnaire Design.

Figure A.5: IT Magazine Questionnaire Design.


Figure A.6: Social Media Questionnaire Design.

Figure A.7: Book Publisher Questionnaire Design.


Figure A.8: Video Questionnaire Design.

Figure A.9: Blog Questionnaire Design.


Figure A.10: Usefulness of Forums Questionnaire Design.

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