do you plan to make some with more participants than just 3?
We planned to source 5 participants for the study, but 2 fell through due to scheduling conflicts and experience alignment. In general, our research team aims for 4-5 participants for studies like this.
To answer @BrenBarn questions:
- It looks like participants 2 and 3 are students. Is Participant 1 also a student, or does “electrical engineering major” just mean that was what they studied in the past? Was it a specific goal to recruit students for the study?
Participant 1 was a recent graduate with an electrical engineering background. The screener for the study filtered for those newer to Python (1-2 years of experience), which oftentimes leads us to talk with students. We didn’t filter for students only for this particular study.
- How/why was it decided to focus on participants with 1-2 years of experience? Was the goal of this specifically to assess the accessibility of these PEPs to beginners?
Correct, the goal was to assess the accessibility of these PEPs to beginners. We felt this level of experience was pertinent to this study and its scope, and is a group of voices we don’t often hear from. However, it is important to note that the results of this study only represent users of this experience level.
- How/whence were the participants recruited?
Our research team recruits participants through userinterviews.com. They are able to recruit participants by defining study and screener requirements and then have the opportunity to pick from those who applied that appear to be the best fit.