Master Thesis MSTR-2020-47

BibliographyLux, Patrick: Investigating the relationship between conscientiousness and the performance in solving coding challenges.
University of Stuttgart, Faculty of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Information Technology, Master Thesis No. 47 (2020).
107 pages, english.
Abstract

A recent study [WGW19] has provided clues that conscientiousness can have a negative effect on the performance in solving coding challenges. Since coding challenges have become a popular tool to assess the problem solving ability and conscientiousness is widely acknowledged to be a positive influence on work performance this has serious implications. To study this effect and its consequences we conducted an exploratory study to find differences less and more conscientious developers display while solving coding challenges. Further, we analyze the differences found on their impact on the performance in solving coding challenges. Our findings indicate that software developers of intermediate and high conscientiousness are more likely to create concepts, think in silence for longer periods of time, start implementing later than less conscientious software developers and provide better code quality. Furthermore, we found that software developers use trial and error approaches regardless of their level of conscientiousness.

Full text and
other links
Volltext
Department(s)University of Stuttgart, Institute of Software Technology, Empirical Software Engineering
Superviser(s)Wagner, Prof. Stefan; Wyrich, Marvin
Entry dateMarch 3, 2021
   Publ. Computer Science