A quantitative analysis of survey data for software design patterns

Abstract

Software design patterns are largely concerned with improving the practices and products of software development. However, there has been no systematic analysis how users' profiles influence the effectiveness of design patterns. The aim of this paper is to investigate the links between the respondents' demographic data from our previous online survey and the design patterns. In this paper we employ a statistical approach to analyse the quantitative data collected from the respondents of our previous online survey. Through analysing the demographic data from the 206 responses of the questionnaire, we find that the positive assessment percentage of using patterns increases with greater experience with design patterns. The results show that the functions of design patterns are influenced by users' experiences rather than users' roles.