MSR 2023
Dates to be announced Melbourne, Australia
co-located with ICSE 2023
Tue 16 May 2023 14:35 - 14:47 at Meeting Room 110 - Human Aspects Chair(s): Alexander Serebrenik

Mobile software apps (“apps”) are one of the prevailing digital technologies that our modern life heavily depends on. A key issue in the development of apps is how to design gender-inclusive apps. Apps that do not consider gender inclusion, diversity, and equality in their design can create barriers (e.g., excluding some of the users because of their gender) for their diverse users. While there have been some efforts to develop gender-inclusive apps, a lack of deep understanding regarding user perspectives on gender may prevent app developers and owners from identifying issues related to gender and proposing solutions for improvement. Users express many different opinions about apps in their reviews, from sharing their experiences, and reporting bugs, to requesting new features. In this study, we aim at unpacking gender discussions about apps from the user perspective by analysing app reviews. We first develop and evaluate several Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) classifiers that automatically detect gender reviews (i.e., reviews that contain discussions about gender). We apply our ML and DL classifiers on a manually constructed dataset of 1,440 app reviews from the Google App Store, composing 620 gender reviews and 820 non-gender reviews. Our best classifier achieves an F1-score of 90.77%. Second, our qualitative analysis of a randomly selected 388 out of 620 gender reviews shows that gender discussions in app reviews revolve around six topics: App Features, Appearance, Content, Company Policy and Censorship, Advertisement, and Community. Finally, we provide some practical implications and recommendations for developing gender-inclusive apps.

Tue 16 May

Displayed time zone: Hobart change

14:35 - 15:15
Human AspectsTechnical Papers / Data and Tool Showcase Track at Meeting Room 110
Chair(s): Alexander Serebrenik Eindhoven University of Technology
14:35
12m
Talk
A Study of Gender Discussions in Mobile Apps
Technical Papers
Mojtaba Shahin RMIT University, Australia, Mansooreh Zahedi The Univeristy of Melbourne, Hourieh Khalajzadeh Deakin University, Australia, Ali Rezaei Nasab Shiraz University
Pre-print
14:47
12m
Talk
Tell Me Who Are You Talking to and I Will Tell You What Issues Need Your Skills
Technical Papers
Fabio Marcos De Abreu Santos Northern Arizona University, USA, Jacob Penney Northern Arizona University, João Felipe Pimentel Northern Arizona University, Igor Wiese Federal University of Technology, Igor Steinmacher Northern Arizona University, Marco Gerosa Northern Arizona University
Pre-print
14:59
6m
Talk
She Elicits Requirements and He Tests: Software Engineering Gender Bias in Large Language Models
Technical Papers
Christoph Treude University of Melbourne, Hideaki Hata Shinshu University
Pre-print Media Attached
15:05
6m
Talk
GitHub OSS Governance File Dataset
Data and Tool Showcase Track
Yibo Yan University of California, Davis, Seth Frey University of California, Davis, Amy Zhang University of Washington, Seattle, Vladimir Filkov University of California at Davis, USA, Likang Yin University of California at Davis
Pre-print