Pandemic Programming: Investigating how working from home during COVID-19 is affecting software professionals.
To participate in the survey, click here.
You are invited to take part in a research study being conducted by Dr. Rashina Hoda, an Associate Professor at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, Dr. D. Paul Ralph, an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada, and Dr. Sebastian Baltes, a Lecturer at the School of Computer Science at the University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia.
The purpose of this research is to explore how working from home during COVID-19 is affecting the wellbeing and productivity of software professionals. We will write up the results of this research to publish in a peer-reviewed academic journal or conference.
As a participant in the research you will be asked to answer questions about your wellbeing, productivity and various factors that may affect them in an online survey using Google Forms. It will take approximately 20 minutes to complete this survey.
Once data collection is complete, responses will be downloaded and erased from Google’s servers. The data will be saved and encrypted in Dalhousie’s secure cloud storage. The data will be analyzed using Microsoft Excel, SPSS, and SmartPLS (https://www.smartpls.com/) using the researchers’ password protected computers.
Your participation in this research is entirely your choice. You do not have to answer questions that you do not want to answer, and you are welcome to stop the survey at any time if you no longer want to participate. All you need to do is close your browser. However, if you do complete your survey and later change your mind, we will not be able to remove the information you provided because the surveys are completed anonymously, so we would not know which response is yours.
Information that you provide to us will be collected anonymously. The survey does not ask for your name or any other information that could be used to identify you. The researchers named above will have access to the survey results, which are completely anonymous.
We will describe and share general findings in presentations and scientific journals. We will not share quotations from open-ended questions. If and only if we are satisfied that it is virtually impossible to de-anonymize any of the records in the dataset, we will publish the anonymous dataset in a scientific data repository. Publishing datasets helps scientists reproduce research, which helps improve our knowledge of the world. However, if we can think of any way that someone might be able to link some of the data back to an individual person, we will not publish the dataset and will delete it after five years (on May 1, 2025).
The risks associated with this study are no greater than those you encounter in your everyday life.
There will be no direct benefit to you in participating in this research. However, if we receive at least 130 responses, we will donate $500 to an open source project. If you choose to participate, you will get a chance to vote for your favorite project at the end of the survey. Moreover, the research may produce recommendations for how companies can better support employees like you during this crisis, and your company may choose to implement some of these recommendations.
If you have any questions about this project and survey, please feel free to contact us at rashina.hoda@monash.edu, paulralph@dal.ca or sebastian.baltes@adelaide.edu.au. We will be happy to answer any questions you may have.
If you have any ethical concerns about your participation in this research, you may contact Research Ethics, Dalhousie University at (902) 494-1462, or email ethics@dal.ca (and reference REB file # 2020-5116).”
Rashina Hoda 