Tootfinder

Further Evidence on a Controversial Topic about Human-Based Experiments: Professionals vs. Students
Simone Romano, Francesco Paolo Sferratore, Giuseppe Scanniello
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11597

Further Evidence on a Controversial Topic about Human-Based Experiments: Professionals vs. Students
Most Software Engineering (SE) human-based controlled experiments rely on students as participants, raising concerns about their external validity. Specifically, the realism of results obtained from students and their applicability to the software industry remains in question. In this short paper, we bring further evidence on this controversial point. To do so, we compare 62 students and 42 software professionals on a bug-fixing task on the same Java program. The students were enrolled in a Bac…