Use of personality tests in empirical software engineering studies : A review of ethical issues

• There has been a lot of research on personality and its impact on software engineering practice. These studies use different psychological tests to identify personality types of software practitioners. The administration of these tests requires expertise. As the humans are involved, other ethical issues, such as consent, also become important. In this study, we evaluated a small sample of 15 studies that used a psychological test Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) in a software engineering context with respect to different ethical issues related to informed consent, qualification of the test administrators and the use of appropriate tests. The results show that most of the studies in our sample seriously lack with respect to various ethical issues. © 2019 Association for Computing Machinery.

Ämnesord

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Programvaruteknik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Software Engineering (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Empirical software engineering

Ethical issues

Personality tests

Philosophical aspects

Testing

Myers-Briggs Type Indicators

Personality types

Psychological tests

Software engineering practices

Software practitioners

Software testing

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)