Diversity Awareness in Software Engineering Participant Research
Riya Dutta, Diego Elias Costa, Emad Shihab, Tanja Tajmel

TL;DR
This study analyzes how diversity is reported and considered in software engineering participant research, revealing gaps in social diversity consideration and proposing guidelines to improve diversity awareness.
Contribution
It provides an empirical analysis of diversity reporting in SE research and introduces a diversity awareness model and guidelines for researchers.
Findings
Most studies report on professional diversity, less on social diversity.
Diversity is rarely analyzed or discussed in study results.
12 diversity categories are identified in SE participant studies.
Abstract
Diversity and inclusion are necessary prerequisites for shaping technological innovation that benefits society as a whole. A common indicator of diversity consideration is the representation of different social groups among software engineering (SE) researchers, developers, and students. However, this does not necessarily entail that diversity is considered in the SE research itself. In our study, we examine how diversity is embedded in SE research, particularly research that involves participant studies. To this end, we have selected 79 research papers containing 105 participant studies spanning three years of ICSE technical tracks. Using a content analytical approach, we identified how SE researchers report the various diversity categories of their study participants and investigated: 1) the extent to which participants are described, 2) what diversity categories are commonly…
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Taxonomy
TopicsOpen Source Software Innovations · Software Engineering Techniques and Practices · Software Engineering Research
