# A Study on the Prevalence of Human Values in Software Engineering Publications, 2015-2018

## TL;DR

This study analyzes the extent to which recent software engineering research incorporates human values like fairness and equality, revealing limited consideration and highlighting the need for more value-aware development practices.

## Contribution

It provides an empirical assessment of human values in SE publications from 2015-2018, classifying their relevance and identifying gaps in current research.

## Key findings

- Few publications directly address human values.
- Most values have minimal or no relevant publications.
- Higher prevalence of relevant publications in conferences than journals.

## Abstract

Failure to account for human values in software (e.g., equality and fairness) can result in user dissatisfaction and negative socio-economic impact. Engineering these values in software, however, requires technical and methodological support throughout the development life cycle. This paper investigates to what extent software engineering (SE) research has considered human values. We investigate the prevalence of human values in recent (2015 - 2018) publications at some of the top-tier SE conferences and journals. We classify SE publications, based on their relevance to different values, against a widely used value structure adopted from social sciences. Our results show that: (a) only a small proportion of the publications directly consider values, classified as relevant publications; (b) for the majority of the values, very few or no relevant publications were found; and (c) the prevalence of the relevant publications was higher in SE conferences compared to SE journals. This paper shares these and other insights that motivate research on human values in software engineering.