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Thu 12 Nov 2020 01:39 - 01:40 at Virtual room 1 - Community

The software development profession suffers from severe gender biases, which could be explicit and implicit. However, SE literature has not systematically explored and evaluated the methods for reducing gender biases, especially for implicit gender biases. This paper reports on a field experiment to examine whether the intergroup contact theory could reduce implicit gender biases in software development. In the field experiment, 280 undergraduate students taking a project-centric introductory software engineering course were assigned to 70 teams with different contact configurations. We measured and compared their explicit and implicit gender biases before and after contacts in their teams. The study yields a rich set of findings. First, we confirmed the positive effects of intergroup contact theory in reducing gender biases, particularly the implicit gender biases in both general and SE-specific contexts. We further revealed that such effects were subjected to different contact configurations. The intergroup contact theory's effects were maximized in teams where the number of females is greater than or equal to the number of males. When the female is the minority group in a team, contacts among members contribute to reducing male members' implicit gender biases but fail to result in the same scale of effects on female members' implicit gender biases. The findings provide insights into using intergroup contact theory in reducing implicit gender biases in software development contexts.

Thu 12 Nov

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01:30 - 02:00
01:30
2m
Talk
A First Look at Good First Issues on GitHub
Research Papers
Xin Tan Peking University, China, Minghui Zhou Peking University, China, Zeyu Sun Peking University, China
DOI
01:32
2m
Talk
A Theory of the Engagement in Open Source Projects via Summer of Code Programs
Research Papers
Jefferson Silva PUC-SP, Brazil, Igor Wiese Federal University of Technology ParanĂ¡, Brazil, Daniel M. German University of Victoria, Canada, Christoph Treude University of Adelaide, Australia, Marco Gerosa Northern Arizona University, USA, Igor Steinmacher Northern Arizona University, USA
DOI
01:35
1m
Talk
Biases and Differences in Code Review using Medical Imaging and Eye-Tracking: Genders, Humans, and Machines
Research Papers
Yu Huang University of Michigan, Kevin Leach University of Michigan, Zohreh Sharafi University of Michigan, Nicholas McKay University of Michigan, USA, Tyler Santander University of California at Santa Barbara, Westley Weimer University of Michigan, USA
DOI
01:37
1m
Talk
Does Stress Impact Technical Interview Performance?
Research Papers
Mahnaz (Mana) Behroozi North Carolina State University, USA, Shivani Shirolkar North Carolina State University, USA, Titus Barik Microsoft, USA, Chris Parnin North Carolina State University, USA
DOI
01:39
1m
Talk
Reducing Implicit Gender Biases in Software Development: Does Intergroup Contact Theory Work?
Research Papers
Yi Wang CoCo Labs, USA, Min Zhang East China Normal University, China
DOI
01:41
19m
Talk
Conversations on Community
Paper Presentations
Kelly Blincoe University of Auckland, Mahnaz (Mana) Behroozi North Carolina State University, USA, Xin Tan Peking University, China, Yi Wang Rochester Institute of Technology, Yu Huang University of Michigan, M: Peter Rigby Concordia University, Montreal, Canada