# Programmers motivation: academic research **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [November 10, 2009, 8:58am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/programmers-motivation-academic-research/178728 "2009-11-10T08:58:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![mpaxton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/8c91f0/32.png) [@mpaxton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mpaxton)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 8:58am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/programmers-motivation-academic-research/178728/1 "2009-11-10T08:58:20Z")
Dear Ruby community, We are researching the motivation factors of Open Source software programmers and would like to ask your cooperation in our large-scale research. The research is performed for the Amsterdam Business School of the University of Amsterdam. Your participation would consist of completing an online survey to which we have linked below. Your participation is completely anonymous and the research publication will be freely available, including the results of the survey. The goal of the research is to better understand the motivations software programmers have for joining and contributing to an Open Source project. The insights gained from this research would help the development of theory for Information Management and could help practitioners better understand Open Source projects. Next to this, the publication of this research will increase the exposure of the development of Open Source software within the academic environment. Please follow the link to the online survey. Our test audience has shown that completing the survey will take about 15 minutes. Your time is highly appreciated by us. [http://bit.ly/Survey\_Developers\_Motivation](http://bit.ly/Survey_Developers_Motivation) Kind regards, Dr. Thomas Adelaar Mark Pith ---
**Author:** ![mpaxton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/8c91f0/32.png) [@mpaxton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mpaxton)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 3:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/programmers-motivation-academic-research/178728/2 "2009-11-10T15:31:10Z")
On Nov 10, 2009, at 1:58 AM, Mark Pith wrote: > Dear Ruby community, > > We are researching the motivation factors of Open Source software > programmers and would like to ask your cooperation in our large-scale > research. > Please follow the link to the online survey. I took the survey, but this was my final comment: This questionnaire is very repetitive. Questions like “Will working on this project get me a better job?” or “Does working on this project increase my reputation?” are asked many different times in almost the exact same way. It would probably be less of a commitment, and as such more programmers would be willing to answer, if you could eliminate the repetition. James Edward G. II ---
**Author:** ![mpaxton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/8c91f0/32.png) [@mpaxton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mpaxton)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 8:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/programmers-motivation-academic-research/178728/3 "2009-11-10T20:30:50Z")
On 10.11.2009 15:30, James Edward G. II wrote: > I took the survey, but this was my final comment: > > This questionnaire is very repetitive. Questions like “Will working on this project get me a better job?” or “Does working on this project increase my reputation?” are asked many different times in almost the exact same way. > > It would probably be less of a commitment, and as such more programmers would be willing to answer, if you could eliminate the repetition. I haven’t looked at the survey but it is common practice to state the same question differently more than once in order to calculate an indicator of the consistency of answers. If consistency falls below a certain threshold the result is discarded because it is assumed that the person taking the questionnaire either picked random values or did not fully concentrate on the survey. Kind regards robert ---
**Author:** ![mpaxton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/8c91f0/32.png) [@mpaxton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mpaxton)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2009, 5:59am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/programmers-motivation-academic-research/178728/4 "2009-11-11T05:59:28Z")
> I took the survey, but this was my final comment: > > This questionnaire is very repetitive. Questions like “Will working on > this project get me a better job?” or “Does working on this project > increase my reputation?” are asked many different times in almost the > exact same way. > > It would probably be less of a commitment, and as such more programmers > would be willing to answer, if you could eliminate the repetition. > > James Edward G. II Thanks James for taking the time to participate in our research. And thank you Tom and Robert for replying to James’ remarks on the survey. Indeed some of the questions seem repetitive and we do apologize if this led to any annoyance, however it is needed to have similar questions in the survey to get reliable results (as Tom and Robert indicated). Please let me know if you wish to have more information on the survey design. (please note that information on the research, including the survey design, will not be disclosed until the research is completed) Kind regards, Mark ---
**Author:** ![mpaxton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/8c91f0/32.png) [@mpaxton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mpaxton)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 11:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/programmers-motivation-academic-research/178728/5 "2009-11-10T23:11:48Z")
Robert K. wrote: > > I want to offer agreement with Robert’s comment. As someone with formal training in psychometrics I can assure you “measure twice (or more), cut once” is a well validated and approved of practice in psychological and sociological research, and most especially in research involving subject response, as opposed to researcher- or instrumentation-evaluation or measurement. In a word, repetition confers reliability of measurement. Without that, research of any kind is pointless. It’s unfortunate, of course, that research subjects sometimes protest about the experience this necessary measurement convention gives them. The only fix for this is a research instrument that is so clever that the repetition is not noticed, and that’s not easy or cheap to develop. No easy solutions, here. I have to hope that folks here will do the survey for the sake of assisting the researchers, whose intent, we may fairly assume, is to increase our understanding of this important and most interesting community. Tom – ```auto Tom C., MS MA, LMHC Private practice Psychotherapist Bellingham, Washington, U.S.A: (360) 920-1226 << removed_email_address@domain.invalid >> (email) << TomCloyd.com >> (website) << sleightmind.wordpress.com >> (mental health issues weblog) ``` ---
**Author:** ![mpaxton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/8c91f0/32.png) [@mpaxton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mpaxton)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2009, 8:13pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/programmers-motivation-academic-research/178728/6 "2009-11-11T20:13:14Z")
Aldric G. wrote: > Mark Pith wrote: > > > Indeed some of the questions seem repetitive and we do apologize if this > > led to any annoyance, however it is needed to have similar questions in > > the survey to get reliable results (as Tom and Robert indicated). > > Remember that you’re talking to people who hate repeating themselves… > 🙂 Not only that, but we hate repeating ourselves. 😃 (I haven’t taken the survey yet, but I intend to.) ## Best, Marnen Laibow-Koser [http://www.marnen.org](http://www.marnen.org) removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid ---
**Author:** ![mpaxton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/8c91f0/32.png) [@mpaxton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mpaxton)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2009, 10:41pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/programmers-motivation-academic-research/178728/7 "2009-11-11T22:41:53Z")
On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 1:13 PM, Marnen Laibow-Koser [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)wrote: > Not only that, but we hate repeating ourselves. 😃 Sure there may be merit to similar questions when quizzing some groups of people, the thing is, though, that we really hate repeating ourselves. ---
**Author:** ![mpaxton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/8c91f0/32.png) [@mpaxton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mpaxton)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2009, 1:00pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/programmers-motivation-academic-research/178728/8 "2009-11-11T13:00:43Z")
Mark Pith wrote: > Indeed some of the questions seem repetitive and we do apologize if this > led to any annoyance, however it is needed to have similar questions in > the survey to get reliable results (as Tom and Robert indicated). Remember that you’re talking to people who hate repeating themselves… 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![mpaxton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/8c91f0/32.png) [@mpaxton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mpaxton)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2009, 6:43am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/programmers-motivation-academic-research/178728/9 "2009-11-12T06:43:46Z")
Aldric G. wrote: > Mark Pith wrote: > > > Indeed some of the questions seem repetitive and we do apologize if this > > led to any annoyance, however it is needed to have similar questions in > > the survey to get reliable results (as Tom and Robert indicated). > > Remember that you’re talking to people who hate repeating themselves… > 🙂 Ah I’m sorry, I didn’t know you hated others repeating themselves as well 😉 I’ll repeat myself by saying: thanks for taking the time to have a look at our survey!