Apologies for this off-topic post.
I'm a Java/C++ developer who is also studying psychology.
I would really appreciate it if you would complete a survey that I'm
using for a research project on programmers.
It's easy [Yes/No answers] and takes about 5 minutes.
I will be presenting the results at the American Psychological
Association convention in August.
The study link is:
http://www.elena.com
The survey measures "cognitive style" (analytical/intuitive) which
describes how you process information and learn. The people I've
pre-tested it with found it to be pretty interesting.
I can go to my friends, however it occurred to me that it might be
better to post in a newsgroup and get a larger, more diverse, and
random sample.
Thanks again for your time,
Elena
"elena" <·····@monmouth.com> writes:
> I will be presenting the results at the American Psychological
> Association convention in August.
>
> The study link is:
>
> http://www.elena.com
Just out of curiosity how can this approach to doing a survey possibly
yield meaningful results? Isn't there a huge selection biases toward
people who are willing to fill out random surveys on the net. To say
nothing of the fact that someone could fill out the form multiple
times in essentially random ways?
-Peter
P.S. FWIW, I filled it out. I'm not sure why. Probably because, as it
told me, I'm an "Intuitive" thinker who didn't bother to analyze
whether it made any sense to do so.
--
Peter Seibel ·····@javamonkey.com
Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
Hmmm... I don't think we have to have a sensible reason for everything.
But then my CSI said I was intuitive too. Thank you for completing the
survey in any case.
Actually, my original plan was to use friends, co-workers, their
friends, and so on. I looked into the current thinking on web surveys
more out of curiosity than anything else. Here's the link that
convinced me that it was worth the effort and could yield valid
results:
http://www.psychologie.unizh.ch/sowi/reips/papers/exppsy/ExPsyReipsReprint.pdf
There are mechanisms that can be used to identify multiple submissions.
Apparently, ballot stuffing is a known limitation that cannot be
eliminated, but it can be controlled to some degree.
As for self-selection, those moved to respond may have some
characteristic that predicts cognitive style. After looking at the
literature I could not find any. Limitations can be reported in the
final paper. And then ways to control (an/or account for) them in
further studies can be found.
I'm a student who knows that constant learning is really important to
software developers. Understanding more about how we learn, and how we
work with people who have a different style of learning, could help
those with different styles to work together with less friction. Most
of the studies in this area look at managers (whatever that means). I'm
interested in studying software developers and a web survey is one way
to do this. I think one reason my proposal to the APA was accepted is
because they're interested in us too.
Thanks again for taking the time to write,
Elena
On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 12:05:56 -0800, elena wrote:
> Apologies for this off-topic post.
>
> I'm a Java/C++ developer who is also studying psychology.
>
> I would really appreciate it if you would complete a survey that I'm
> using for a research project on programmers.
>
> It's easy [Yes/No answers] and takes about 5 minutes.
>
> I will be presenting the results at the American Psychological
> Association convention in August.
>
> The study link is:
>
> http://www.elena.com
>
> The survey measures "cognitive style" (analytical/intuitive) which
> describes how you process information and learn. The people I've
> pre-tested it with found it to be pretty interesting.
>
> I can go to my friends, however it occurred to me that it might be
> better to post in a newsgroup and get a larger, more diverse, and
> random sample.
>
> Thanks again for your time,
>
>
> Elena
I did the test, but I can't help but think that analysis and liking
structure are unrelated. I like to think long and hard about problems
and decisions (what I would call analysis) but I thoroughly dislike
structure. Indeed, the way I analyse is pretty chaotic but I usually keep
at it until I'm comfortable I've pretty well covered everything. So I'm
pretty sure there should be no correlation between preference for analysis
and preference for structure.
Sounds like you analyze in an unstructured way. I'll have to look at
the literature and see if there is any model that describes this type
of thinking.
"Christopher C. Stacy" <······@news.dtpq.com> wrote in message
··················@news.dtpq.com...
> I get on best with noisy, animated, thoughtul people.
>
Chris, you might want to check the connections to your receiver. Most anime
is fairly noise-free these days, unless you are still using a VCR.
Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> schrieb:
> On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 12:05:56 -0800, elena wrote:
>> I'm a Java/C++ developer who is also studying psychology.
>> [...]
>> The survey measures "cognitive style" (analytical/intuitive) which
>> describes how you process information and learn. The people I've
>> pre-tested it with found it to be pretty interesting.
>
> I did the test, but I can't help but think that analysis and liking
> structure are unrelated.
In the same vein... I wonder if Lispers (and Smalltalkers, ...?) might
be an exceptional group among programmers for exactly this reason.
Bottom-up, iterative, exploratory programming is not very structured,
but it is analytical. One might even say that up-front design relies too
much on the designer's intuition of how to do things without actually
trying to do them.
Plus, what programmer doesn't like thinking logically and knowing all
the details? If the survey is targetted at programmers, I wish it
focused more on differences among them, like bottom-up versus top-down,
agile versus waterfall, pure versus practical, Lisp versus Java.
Adrian Kubala wrote:
> Robert Marlow <··········@bobturf.org> schrieb:
>> I did the test, but I can't help but think that analysis and liking
>> structure are unrelated.
>
>
> In the same vein... I wonder if Lispers (and Smalltalkers, ...?)
> might be an exceptional group among programmers for exactly this
> reason. Bottom-up, iterative, exploratory programming is not very
> structured, but it is analytical. One might even say that up-front
> design relies too much on the designer's intuition of how to do
> things without actually trying to do them.
Forth programming is even more bottom-up and exploratory than Lisp;
functions tend to be much shorter on average (a line or two) and
"factoring" common functionality into shared functions is a mantra. It's
conventional wisdom among Forthers that this contributes to making them
more productive than average.
Adrian Kubala <······@sixfingeredman.net> writes:
> One might even say that up-front design relies too
> much on the designer's intuition of how to do things without actually
> trying to do them.
Also, too much on asuming what the end-user wants without actually being
able to show them.
--
Rahul Jain
·····@nyct.net
Professional Software Developer, Amateur Quantum Mechanicist