Predicting programmers' personality via interaction behaviour with keyboard and mouse

Computer Science, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Abbottabad, KpK, Pakistan
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.1183v1
Subject Areas
Psychiatry and Psychology, Human-Computer Interaction
Keywords
Programmers, Mouse, Keyboard, Interaction, Personality, Estimation, Behaviour, Measurement
Copyright
© 2015 Khan et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Khan IA, Khalid O, Jadoon W, Shan RU, Nasir AN. 2015. Predicting programmers' personality via interaction behaviour with keyboard and mouse. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e1183v1

Abstract

This exploratory research was conducted to study the relationship between Big Five personality measurement scale and the interaction behaviour of the programmers with keyboard and mouse to examine the possibility of creating a computer based objective personality measurement scale. A field study with two analyses (N = 20), (N = 12) and a lab study (N = 15) were conducted where N is the number of participants who participated in the research. In the field study, interaction data were collected during normal PC use over several days. In the laboratory study, participants worked on a programming task while their interaction with keyboard and mouse was being recorded in background. All of the participants rated their personality online and uploaded the data for analysis. Results found inconsistent behaviour of all of the personality traits except ‘activity level’ in all studies and thus suggested that a programmer’s ‘activity level’ can be predicted from his/her interaction behaviour with keyboard and mouse. This prediction will help in differentiating good programmers from not so good programmers objectively.

Author Comment

This is a submission to PeerJ for review.

Supplemental Information

Experiment 1 data extracted with the help of custom made application from log files

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.1183v1/supp-1

Experiment 2 data extracted with help of an application from the log files

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.1183v1/supp-2

Experiment 1 data extracted around active windows/software participants were working on with the help of an application

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.1183v1/supp-3