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Informing Science + IT Education Conference 2003 Proceedings
| Informing Science + IT Education Conference |
| Pori, Finland June 24-27, 2003 |
| Is it Ethical to Log Users’ Actions in Software Engineering Experiments? |
| Simula Research Laboratory, Norway |
| In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the number of empirical studies in software engi-neering |
| that involve human participants. Such studies have heightened the need for considering ethical issues. Researchers |
| have not only moral, but also pragmatic, reasons for treating participants in their studies ethically. They want to |
| maintain their access to the data source and to get funding for their re-search. Thus, the researchers need to be |
| aware of both ethical issues in general, and those that are spe-cific to a particular research practice. |
| This paper briefly describes our experiences with a tool that logs all actions of the users/participants (commands, |
| keystrokes and mouse movements), and collects their comments on a web-based screen. The tool was used in two |
| usability studies and raised ethical issues concerning the assurance of confi-dentiality and minimization of |
| inconvenience. The paper also discusses a conflict that appeared during these studies, between ethical standards and |
| the ensuring of experimental validity. |
| Keywords: ethics, experiment, empirical software engineering, logging |
ISSN
1535-07-03
Unless otherwise indicated, this paper has undergone blind external review by three or more reviewers.
Types of Papers: A Best Paper, Regular Paper, Short Paper, Informal Paper,
Unrefereed Panel Paper
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