Two Decades of Empirical Research on Developers' Information Needs: A Preliminary Analysis

Over the last two decades, developers' daily intake of information has been constantly on the rise and so has the interest of research in investigating the information needs of developers. Knowledge about what information they seek and which sources they rely on is scarce and has to be updated regularly to match the rapid changes in development practices. In this paper, we reflect on the scientific studies published in this field over the last two decades. We present preliminary results of our analysis of a study sample where we particularly focus on the research methods used, the number of recruited participants, and the organisational context in which they emerged. We have investigated a total of 54 studies from 41 publications and found that convenience sampling is the predominant sampling strategy with a prevalence of the industrial organisational context. Moreover, the majority of studies had a reduced sample size and draw participants from a single organisation resulting in high sample homogeneity. Among the studies carried out in industry 51.9% recruited participants from Microsoft.