Guidelines for using financial incentives in software-engineering experimentation

Jacob Krüger, Gül Çalikli, Dmitri Bershadskyy, Siegmar Otto, Sarah Zabel, Robert Heyer

Abstract: Empirical studies with human participants (e.g., controlled experiments) are established methods in Software Engineering (SE) research to understand developers’ activities or the pros and cons of a technique, tool, or practice. Various guidelines and recommendations on designing and conducting different types of empirical studies in SE exist. However, the use of financial incentives (i.e., paying participants to compensate for their effort and improve the validity of a study) is rarely mentioned