Caution: JavaScript execution is disabled in your browser or for this website. You may not be able to answer all questions in this survey. Please, verify your browser parameters.

Debugging survey

Thank you for participating in this study.

In this study, you will work on ten short debugging tasks in the Java programming language.

For each task, you should identify an error in the source code and then answer some questions about your approach.

The aim of this study is to investigate different debugging strategies and mental models used to solve programming tasks. It is not about working as quickly as possible or solving every task correctly.

To obtain comparable results, please complete the tasks without external aids (e.g., development environments, compilers, search engines, or AI systems such as ChatGPT or GitHub Copilot).

Complete the tasks with as few interruptions as possible and answer all questions fully.

Depending on your experience, the entire study is expected to take approximately 30 to 45 minutes to complete.

Feel free to take your time and pause briefly in between, please just keep the browser window open so your progress is preserved.

During processing, the processing time of each task is automatically recorded.

The tasks differ in terms of the type and complexity of the errors they contain.

Mental stress (NASA-TLX)

After each task, you will be asked to rate your perceived mental load .

The question is not whether your solution was right or wrong, but solely how strenuous the task was for you.

Please rate your mental stress level on a scale of 0 to 100 , where:

  • 0 = not mentally stressful at all
  • 100 = maximum mental stress
This survey is anonymous.

The record of your survey responses does not contain any identifying information about you, unless a specific survey question explicitly asked for it.

If you used an identifying access code to access this survey, please rest assured that this code will not be stored together with your responses. It is managed in a separate database and will only be updated to indicate whether you did (or did not) complete this survey. There is no way of matching identification access codes with survey responses.

Exit and clear survey