SURVEY ON REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING PRACTICES USED IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE PROJECTS

INFORMED CONSENT FORM

RESEARCHER:

Jaison Kuriakose
Faculty of Business Administration
Memorial University
Email: jk5573@mun.ca

SUPERVISOR:

Dr. Jeffrey Parsons
Faculty of Business Administration
Memorial University
Email: jeffreyp@mun.ca

You are invited to participate in a survey titled "requirements engineering practices used in the development of open source software projects".

This page (page one) is part of the process of informed consent. It provides the basic information on what the survey study is about and what your participation will involve. It also describes your right to withdraw from the survey at any time. In order to decide whether you wish to participate in this survey, please take sufficient time to read through the information on this page and understand the information to make an informed decision about your participation. This is the informed consent process. please contact the researcher, Jaison Kuriakose (jk5573@mun.ca), if you have any questions about the study or need any more information.

If you decide not to take part in this research now, you may do so at any point of time. If you decide to withdraw from the research once it has started, you may do so at any point of time. There will be no negative consequences, now or in the future.

INTRODUCTION:

My name is Jaison Kuriakose and i am a PhD student at Faculty of Business Administration, Memorial University, Canada. As part of my thesis, i am conducting a survey under the supervision of Dr. Jeffrey Parsons on the requirements engineering practices that may be used during the development of open source software projects.

This survey contains questions about which requirements engineering practices are being used during open source software development, how useful requirements engineering practices are for open source software development, the problems and challenges that may occur during requirements gathering in open source software development and questions on demographic information such as number of open source software projects that you have worked on/contributed to.

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY:

There are three main goals of this survey study. The first goal is to get information on the requirements engineering practices that are being used during the development of open source software projects. The second goal is to get information on what the open source software community thinks about the usefulness of including different requirements engineering practices during development of open source software projects. The third goal is to understand the problems and challenges that may exist during requirements gathering in open source software development.

WHAT WILL YOU DO IN THIS STUDY:

If you agree to participate, you will be taken to the second page which contains questions on the usage of requirements engineering practices during the development of open source software projects. You can click on one of the answer options (e.g. mostly used, never used etc.) to indicate your response. You can also provide comments if you wish to. The next page (page three) contains questions asking about the usefulness of different requirements engineering practices for open source software development and you can select from one of the answer options (e.g. very useful, not useful etc.) to indicate your response. The next page (page four) contains questions on problems and challenges that may occur during requirements gathering in open source software development.

The last page contains questions on demographic information such as average number of hours spent per week working on open source software projects. In all the pages of the survey, you can select answer options to indicate your response. You can also provide additional comments if you wish to. If any of the questions is not clear, there is a * symbol along with most of the question where you can place the cursor and a pop up will come up giving additional information about each question. Please note that none of the questions are mandatory but if maximum questions are completed, it would help to improve the completeness and quality of survey responses.

LENGTH OF THE TIME:

The survey should take around twenty minutes to complete.

WITHDRAWAL FROM THE STUDY:

Your decision to participate in this survey is completely voluntary. You have the right to terminate your participation at any point during this survey. To withdraw, you can simply close the browser. Data will be collected anonymously and therefore, it is not possible to withdraw the collected data after submission.  

BENEFITS:

Although there are no direct benefits to you for your participation in this survey, the data that you provide will help us get information on the current state of requirements engineering in open source software development. It will also be useful for developing requirements engineering tools that may be used during open source software development. For example, by knowing which are the commonly occurring problems during requirements gathering activity, specific tools may be designed to tackle some of these problems. Knowing which requirements engineering practices are considered to be useful by the open source software community can guide future research on requirements engineering in open source software development.

RISKS:

There are no risks to individuals participating in this survey.

CONFIDENTIALITY AND STORAGE OF DATA:

All gathered data will only be used by the researchers and raw data will be kept strictly confidential. All collected data will be stored on a password protected database on a memorial university server. All physical material will be kept in a secure on-campus location. Data will be kept for a minimum of five years. After this time, all data will be deleted.

ANONYMITY:

All collected data will be used only by the mentioned researchers in this study and will not be shared. The survey is held anonymously and you are not asked to provide any identifying information. No one knows who does or does not participate in the study.

REPORTING OF RESULTS:

The results from this survey may be published in a student thesis, conference proceedings and scientific journals. All data will be anonymous.

SHARING OF RESULTS WITH PARTICIPANTS:

After the completion of the study, the results of the study will be available on this webpage:
http://www.business.mun.ca/why-us/meet-our-people/faculty-instructor-profiles/jaison-kuriakose.php
Participants can also request a copy of the research results by sending an email to jk5573@mun.ca

QUESTIONS:

You are welcome to ask questions at any time during your participation in this research. If you would like more information about this research, please contact:
Jaison Kuriakose Email: jk5573@mun.ca

The proposal for this research has been reviewed by the Interdisciplinary Committee on Ethics in Human Research and found to be in compliance with Memorial University's ethics policy. If you have ethical concerns about the research, such as the way you have been treated or your rights as a participant, you may contact the Chairperson of the ICEHR at icehr@mun.ca or by telephone at 709-864-2861.

CONSENT TO PARTICIPATE:

Your consent to this form means that:

You have read the information about the research.
You have been able to or understand that you can ask questions about this study.
You are satisfied with the answers to all your questions.
You understand what the study is about and what you will be doing.
You understand that you are free to withdraw from the study at any point and that your participation is voluntary .
You understand that any data collected from you before submission will not be saved.

If you are willing to participate in this survey study, please click on the next button which will take you to page two that has questions on usage of requirements engineering practices in open source software development.

If you are not willing to participate in this survey study, you can simply close the browser or close the tab to end participation. Thank you for taking time to go through the informed consent form to understand the study details.