Influence of the Pandemic on Software Engineering Researchers

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way we live, work and the way we conduct research. With the restrictions of lock-downs and social distancing, the impact was felt more severely by researchers who normally interact closely with humans, such as empirical software engineering researchers.

In this study we aimed to understand the extent of this impact by conducting surveys and interviews with software engineering researchers. 89 empirical software engineering researchers were surveyed, followed by in depth interviews with 9 researchers. We analysed our results using a mixed methods approach, with common statistical methods adopted for quantitative analysis and socio-technical grounded theory for qualitative analysis.

We found that while there were many challenges faced by software engineering researchers during the pandemic, they overcame these challenges by adapting their methods of participant recruitment, data collection and study design.

Our findings revealed that in retrospect, there are several benefits that were identified from conducting human based research during the pandemic and that 30% researchers did not wish to revert back to ``the old ways" of doing human-based research.

We present a model of how our study found that these challenges, adaptations and benefits are linked together. We provide several recommendations on how to conduct effective, remote human-based studies when face to face interaction is not possible due to situations such as pandemic or when remote participation is desired due to geographically diverse participants.

Project Lead

Dr Anuradha Madugalla

Project Team

Prof Rashina Hoda, Dr Tanjila Kanij, Prof John Grundy, Dr Dulaji Hidellaarachchi, Aastha Pant