Details
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 31st USENIX Security Symposium, Security 2022 |
| Pages | 4041-4058 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| ISBN (electronic) | 9781939133311 |
| Publication status | Published - 2022 |
| Event | 31st USENIX Security Symposium, Security 2022 - Boston, United States Duration: 10 Aug 2022 → 12 Aug 2022 |
Publication series
| Name | Proceedings of the 31st USENIX Security Symposium, Security 2022 |
|---|
Abstract
Studying developers is an important aspect of usable security and privacy research. In particular, studying security development challenges such as the usability of security APIs, the secure use of information sources during development or the effectiveness of IDE security plugins raised interest in recent years. However, recruiting skilled participants with software development experience is particularly challenging, and it is often not clear what security researchers can expect from certain participant samples, which can make research results hard to compare and interpret. Hence, in this work, we study for the first time opportunities and challenges of different platforms to recruit participants with software development experience for security development studies. First, we identify popular recruitment platforms in 59 papers. Then, we conduct a comparative online study with 706 participants based on self-reported software development experience across six recruitment platforms. Using an online questionnaire, we investigate participants' programming and security experiences, skills and knowledge. We find that participants across all samples report rich general software development and security experience, skills, and knowledge. Based on our results, we recommend developer recruitment from Upwork for practical coding studies and Amazon MTurk along with a pre-screening survey to reduce additional noise for larger studies. Both of these, along with Freelancer, are also recommended for security studies. We conclude the paper by discussing the impact of our results on future security development studies.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Computer Science(all)
- Computer Networks and Communications
- Computer Science(all)
- Information Systems
- Engineering(all)
- Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality
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Proceedings of the 31st USENIX Security Symposium, Security 2022. 2022. p. 4041-4058 (Proceedings of the 31st USENIX Security Symposium, Security 2022).
Research output: Chapter in book/report/conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Research › peer review
}
TY - GEN
T1 - Where to Recruit for Security Development Studies
T2 - 31st USENIX Security Symposium, Security 2022
AU - Kaur, Harjot
AU - Amft, Sabrina
AU - Votipka, Daniel
AU - Acar, Yasemin
AU - Fahl, Sascha
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Studying developers is an important aspect of usable security and privacy research. In particular, studying security development challenges such as the usability of security APIs, the secure use of information sources during development or the effectiveness of IDE security plugins raised interest in recent years. However, recruiting skilled participants with software development experience is particularly challenging, and it is often not clear what security researchers can expect from certain participant samples, which can make research results hard to compare and interpret. Hence, in this work, we study for the first time opportunities and challenges of different platforms to recruit participants with software development experience for security development studies. First, we identify popular recruitment platforms in 59 papers. Then, we conduct a comparative online study with 706 participants based on self-reported software development experience across six recruitment platforms. Using an online questionnaire, we investigate participants' programming and security experiences, skills and knowledge. We find that participants across all samples report rich general software development and security experience, skills, and knowledge. Based on our results, we recommend developer recruitment from Upwork for practical coding studies and Amazon MTurk along with a pre-screening survey to reduce additional noise for larger studies. Both of these, along with Freelancer, are also recommended for security studies. We conclude the paper by discussing the impact of our results on future security development studies.
AB - Studying developers is an important aspect of usable security and privacy research. In particular, studying security development challenges such as the usability of security APIs, the secure use of information sources during development or the effectiveness of IDE security plugins raised interest in recent years. However, recruiting skilled participants with software development experience is particularly challenging, and it is often not clear what security researchers can expect from certain participant samples, which can make research results hard to compare and interpret. Hence, in this work, we study for the first time opportunities and challenges of different platforms to recruit participants with software development experience for security development studies. First, we identify popular recruitment platforms in 59 papers. Then, we conduct a comparative online study with 706 participants based on self-reported software development experience across six recruitment platforms. Using an online questionnaire, we investigate participants' programming and security experiences, skills and knowledge. We find that participants across all samples report rich general software development and security experience, skills, and knowledge. Based on our results, we recommend developer recruitment from Upwork for practical coding studies and Amazon MTurk along with a pre-screening survey to reduce additional noise for larger studies. Both of these, along with Freelancer, are also recommended for security studies. We conclude the paper by discussing the impact of our results on future security development studies.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85138472262&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85138472262
T3 - Proceedings of the 31st USENIX Security Symposium, Security 2022
SP - 4041
EP - 4058
BT - Proceedings of the 31st USENIX Security Symposium, Security 2022
Y2 - 10 August 2022 through 12 August 2022
ER -