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Measuring human values in software engineering

Published: 11 October 2018 Publication History

Abstract

Background: Human values, such as prestige, social justice, and financial success, influence software production decision-making processes. While their subjectivity makes some values difficult to measure, their impact on software motivates our research. Aim: To contribute to the scientific understanding and the empirical investigation of human values in Software Engineering (SE). Approach: Drawing from social psychology, we consider values as mental representations to be investigated on three levels: at a system (L1), personal (L2), and instantiation level (L3). Method: We design and develop a selection of tools for the investigation of values at each level, and focus on the design, development, and use of the Values Q-Sort. Results: From our study with 12 software practitioners, it is possible to extract three values `prototypes' indicative of an emergent typology of values considerations in SE. Conclusions: The Values Q-Sort generates quantitative values prototypes indicating values relations (L1) as well as rich personal narratives (L2) that reflect specific software practices (L3). It thus offers a systematic, empirical approach to capturing values in SE.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    ESEM '18: Proceedings of the 12th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement
    October 2018
    487 pages
    ISBN:9781450358231
    DOI:10.1145/3239235
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

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    Published: 11 October 2018

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    Author Tags

    1. Q-sort
    2. human values
    3. mixed methods
    4. software engineering

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    • (2024)Predicting open source contributor turnover from value-related discussions: An analysis of GitHub issuesProceedings of the IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering10.1145/3597503.3623340(1-13)Online publication date: 20-May-2024
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