Participants Needed for Programmer Study

Programmers of All Levels Needed for Study!

We would like to invite you to participate in a study of programmers’ online information seeking.

Fill out this survey if interested or contact Pei-Yao through peiyaoh@umich.edu for any questions.

This web site is setup by a graduate student, Pei-Yao (Perry) Hung, for his research project at the School of Information at the University of Michigan. The study is sponsored by the National Science Foundation and has been approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of Michigan.

Study Description:

We want to understand the differences in information seeking among programmers with various levels of expertise. Your participation would be valuable and will help us better understand how technology can assist programmers in information seeking.

Gratuity:

A participant will receive a $20 gift card for finishing the interview and the first two weeks, and another $20 gift card for finishing the extra two weeks and a follow-up interview.

Study Procedure:

  • The study will span 2 weeks and take you less than 30 minutes each week, with the option to extend it to 4 weeks if interested (subject to our approval).

  • We will schedule a brief phone/Skype interview (i.e., less than 30 minutes) to understand your programming experience.

  • You will submit your web browsing and downloading history to us weekly. We will provide a tool, which you can use to clean up your history so that you are comfortable of submitting the remaining browsing and downloading records.

Qualifications:

  • You must be at least 18 years old and be able to communicate in English.

  • You will program regularly each week during the study period (2 ~ 4 weeks). (Contact us if you are not sure.)

  • You access information about programming on the Internet.

  • You mainly use Firefox or Google Chrome browser on a Windows or Mac OSX machine to access information online.

  • You can submit the URLs you visit to us using the tool we provide.

  • Eligibility is evaluated by a brief phone/Skype/email interview.

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