Ethical Issues in Software Engineering Research: A Survey of Current Practice

Abstract

In this paper we explore how the software engineering research community is currently dealing with the ethical issues that some empirical research presents. We discuss how the immaturity of the software engineering discipline is reflected in an approach to ethical issues that compares unfavourably with other more mature disciplines. We show that an analysis of recent published work measures an increase in empirical software engineering research currently being undertaken. We also discuss our survey of UK University Department Heads which explores how the software engineering research community is dealing with the ethical issues related to empirical work. Overall we found that whilst some UK Universities have taken ethical issues very seriously, others have not considered the issues.