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3.3 Method
Online surveys have become increasingly common over the last decade, as Internet
usage has grown by leaps and bounds. Surveys have become an established empiri-
cal method, especially for human behavior on the Internet [
19
].
These studies have been conducted to improve understanding of why users
look for information, their search requirements, their search strategies, backgrounds
and experiences, and their comparative assessment of available search mechanisms
[
9
,
11
,
18
,
22
]. Sim, Clarke, and Holt [
12
] conducted an online survey in late 1997
of source code searching among programmers that served as the model for this
research. Underpinning these research designs are traditional survey methods that
have been used in the social sciences for many years [
1
]. The design of this study is
presented in this section.
3.3.1 Research Questions
In this study, we wanted to gain an understanding of how software developers cur-
rently search for source code on the Internet. The search features on project hosting
sites and the emergence of source code-specific search engines hint at the kinds of
search taking place, but empirical data is needed. Therefore the research questions
for this study were as follows.
•
What tools do programmers use to search for source code on the Internet?
•
What do they look for when they are searching source code?
•
How do they use the source code that is found?
Data on what tools are used provide information about the skills and tendencies
of programmers when searching the web. The search targets and usage patterns for
the code suggest new features. Answers to the last two questions were obtained from
the open ended questions, when analyzed resulted in search archetypes.
3.3.2 Data Collection
We designed an online survey with 11 closed-ended questions and 2 open-ended
questions. This chapter is focused on the results from one of the open-ended ques-
tions, which asked:
Please describe one or two scenarios when you were looking for source code on the Inter-
net. (Please address details such as: What were you trying to find? How did you formulate
your queries? What information sources did you use to find the source code? Which imple-
mentation language were you working with? What criteria did you use to decide on the best
match?)
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