Participant Information Sheet

This research aims at identifying the factors that either increase or decrease the maintainability of relational database-driven software applications and the strength of this impact. Relational database-driven software applications are those that interact with a back-end database through a Relational Database Management System (DBMS) and maintainability represents the level of ease with which a database-driven software application can be modified to correct faults, to be enhanced, or to be adapted to a changed environment.

These identified factors will be later used as basis for predicting the maintainability for relational database-driven software applications. Knowing these factors would help in developing more maintainable relational database-driven software applications. The potential results of this research will help software organizations to consider the factors that impact maintainability, improve upon them, and develop maintainable database-driven software applications thereby reducing the cost and time spent on software maintenance.

Participation will involve filling in a survey form which can take 30 to 50 minutes. The survey will cover your opinion based on your overall experience on whether how much the listed factors increase or decrease maintainability of relational database-driven software applications. Unfortunately, no remuneration will be offered to you for your participation. However, once the results of the survey are synthesized, these will be presented to you upon request. These results can be used by your company to improve maintainability of the relational database-driven software applications that it creates.

Your participation in this survey is voluntary and the information you provide will be strictly kept confidential. The responses from the survey will be synthesized and used in the PhD thesis and related research publications. However, no individual responses or the names of the participants will be included in either the PhD thesis or publications. You may withdraw participation from this research within three months of when you have agreed to participate. In case of any ambiguity the participant may contact me.

If you have any queries or wish to know more about this research, please do not hesitate to contact Mehwish Riaz (mria007@aucklanduni.ac.nz) or Associate Professor Emilia Mendes (emilia AT cs.auckland.ac.nz).

Thank you very much for your participation.

Click the "Continue" button below to start the questionnaire and hence provide your consent to participate in this research.

View the Online Consent Form & Participant Information Sheet for the Company

View the Participant Information Sheet for an employee

Download the entire questionnaire