The Shape of Code

For some time now, my default position has been that software engineering surveys, of the questionnaire kind, are fake research (surveys of a particular research field used to be worth reading, but not so often these days; that issues is for another post). Every now and again a non-fake survey paper pops up, but I don’t consider the cost of scanning all the fake stuff to be worth the benefit of finding the rare non-fake survey.

In theory, surveys could be interesting and worth reading about. Some of the things that often go wrong in practice include:

• poorly thought out questions. Questions need to be specific and applicable to the target audience. General questions are good for starting a conversation, but analysis of the answers is a nightmare. Perhaps the questions are non-specific because the researcher is looking for direction: well please don’t inflict your search for direction on the rest of us (a pointless plea in the fling it at the wall to see if it sticks world of academic publishing).

  Questions that demonstrate how little the researcher knows about the topic serve no purpose. The purpose of a survey is to provide information of interest to those in the field, not as a means of educating a researcher about what they should already know,

• little effort is invested in contacting a representative sample. Questionnaires tend to be sent to the people that the researcher has easy access to, i.e., a convenience sample. The quality of answers depends on the quality and quantity of those who replied. People who run surveys for a living put a lot of effort into targeting as many of the right people as possible,
• sloppy and unimaginative analysis of the replies. I am so fed up with seeing an extensive analysis of the demographics of those who replied. Tables containing response break-down by age, sex, type of degree (who outside of academia cares about this) create a scientific veneer hiding the lack of any meaningful analysis of the issues that motivated the survey.

Although I have taken part in surveys in the past, these days I recommend that people ignore requests to take part in surveys. Your replies only encourage more fake research.

The aim of this post is to warn readers about the growing use of this form of fake research. I don’t expect anything I say to have any impact on the number of survey papers published.