This consent form, a copy of which has been given to you, is only part of the process of informed consent. If you want more details about something mentioned here, or information not included here, you should feel free to ask. Please take the time to read this carefully and to understand any accompanying information.
The University of Calgary Conjoint Faculties Research Ethics Board has approved this research study.
Purpose of the Study:
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the usefulness and precision of a tool, named Example eXtractor or EX, that we have developed. This tool extracts test methods which are considered to be usage examples of this API. Basically, the only source of examples in this study is the API's unit tests. EX extracts a list of test methods as the list of useful examples, and we want to obtain the opinion of the professional API users and developers about how useful these examples would be. The main goal is to find out if API's unit tests can provide a complementary source of usage examples and to enhance our tool for finding those examples.
The Study Website:
The online survey is being administered by SurveyGizmo©, an American software company. As such, your responses are subject to U.S. laws, including the USA Patriot Act. The risks associated with participation are minimal, however, and similar to those associated with many e-mail programs, such as Hotmail© and social utilities spaces, such as Facebook© and MySpace©.
What Will I Be Asked To Do?
When you start the study, ten code snippets extracted from API test methods will be shown to you, one at a time. For each method, simply select a number between 1 and 7 which 7 means "very useful" and 1 means "completely useless." Choose your response based on your experience as an API user/developer. Choose 7 or "very useful" if you think the content of this method can help some API users, especially people who are relatively new-comers in using this API. Otherwise, if you think it is not helpful for anyone (except for the API designers) just choose 1 or “completely useless.” If you think it could be somehow useful for API learners, select a number in between. For each code snippet that is represented to you, you can optionally provide an explanation on why you have chosen that code snippet as useful/useless. You can use the provided text box to enter this extra explanation.
The entire study will take about 10 minutes. You can withdraw from the study at any time during the study by leaving the study web site.
At the end of the study, you will have another chance to provide extra explanation about what you consider as good API usage examples and why or why not the extracted test methods can be considered as such useful examples. Providing explanations is optional, yet it is highly encouraged.
What Type of Personal Information Will Be Collected?
Should you agree to participate, you will be asked to provide some information about your programming experience and your experience with this API.
At the end of the study, we will ask you to provide your name and email address if you are willing to be contacted for the follow-up questions. Please be informed that providing this information is completely optional and we will just use this information to contact you for one round of follow-up questions. Your name and contact information will be kept securely and no one except the named researchers will have access to them. They will not be used for any other purposes rather than the follow-up questions.
Are there Risks or Benefits if I Participate?
There is no harm, discomfort, or risk associated with your participation in this research.
What Happens to the Information I Provide?
Individual participant anonymity will be strictly maintained. Participation is completely voluntary, anonymous and confidential. You are free to discontinue participation at any time during the study. If you decide to withdraw in the middle of the study by leaving the study web-site, you will grant researchers permission to use the result of the partially-completed survey
No one except the named researchers will be allowed to see any of the answers to the questionnaire. Only group information will be summarized for any presentation or publication of results. Parts of your extra explanation during the study session might be quoted using pseudonyms in publications and presentations. The results might be used in academic publications, such as, but not limited to, the researcher’s PhD thesis, scientific journals, conference papers and presentations. The questionnaires are kept on a secure server only accessible by the named researchers. The anonymous data will be stored in a password protected format indefinitely and might be used by other researchers.