Dan, >Those resources are required on the part of the experimenters, not the >subjects, however. If it were simply a question of convincing the funding >institution of the merit of the study, that would be one thing. When you >have to convince software engineers who already likely work long hours and >make significant salaries which an experimenter cannot match to participate >in the study it becomes a bit more difficult.
Perhaps one day large scale experiments will pay industrial subjects to take part over long periods of time (since they are likely to be earning several times more than the experimenter(s) this raises interesting questions). I find that many software developers are willing to give their time for nothing provided they believe that the experiment has relevance to them and does not require too much time (I think an hour or so might be the limit). But then I have the advantage of coming from industry and having a bit of grey hair. The problem is that academic software engineering has such a bad reputation in industry that software developers are unlikely to believe in the relevance of taking part in an experiment. Again, another vicious circle. derek -- Derek M Jones tel: +44 (0) 1252 520 667 Knowledge Software Ltd mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Applications Standards Conformance Testing http://www.knosof.co.uk ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PPIG Discuss List ([email protected]) Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/
