ŠŤAVOVÁ, Vlasta, Lenka DĚDKOVÁ, Martin UKROP and Václav MATYÁŠ. A large-scale comparative study of beta testers and regular users. Communications of the ACM. New York, NY, USA: ACM, 2018, vol. 61, No 2, p. 64-71. ISSN 0001-0782. Available from: https://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3173570.
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Basic information
Original name A large-scale comparative study of beta testers and regular users
Authors ŠŤAVOVÁ, Vlasta (203 Czech Republic, guarantor, belonging to the institution), Lenka DĚDKOVÁ (203 Czech Republic, belonging to the institution), Martin UKROP (703 Slovakia, belonging to the institution) and Václav MATYÁŠ (203 Czech Republic, belonging to the institution).
Edition Communications of the ACM, New York, NY, USA, ACM, 2018, 0001-0782.
Other information
Original language English
Type of outcome Article in a journal
Field of Study 10201 Computer sciences, information science, bioinformatics
Country of publisher United States of America
Confidentiality degree is not subject to a state or trade secret
WWW URL
Impact factor Impact factor: 5.410
RIV identification code RIV/00216224:14330/18:00102080
Organization unit Faculty of Informatics
Doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3173570
UT WoS 000423882400022
Keywords in English beta testers; regular users; large-scale comparison; security software
Tags best3
Tags International impact, Reviewed
Changed by Changed by: RNDr. Martin Ukrop, Ph.D., učo 374297. Changed: 15/4/2020 15:16.
Abstract
In this paper, we investigate whether beta testers represent regular users well enough to allow for the extrapolation of testing data to standard users. We have investigated records of beta testers and standard users of home security solution developed by the IT security software provider ESET. With more than 600 000 participants from more than 180 countries, we present what we believe to be the first large-scale comparison between regular users and beta testers. We compared several aspects of both populations, such as hardware, operating system, country of origin, all taken from system data. Other attributes, such as age, gender, privacy perception and computer proficiency self-evaluation, were available thanks to a user questionnaire. We conclude that–in our study–beta users represent regular users well in terms of hardware and operating system in large-scale beta testing. However, populations differ significantly in the distribution of users and testers between countries. We also provide general recommendations for selecting and/or analyzing beta testers.
Links
MUNI/M/1052/2013, interní kód MUName: Experimentální výzkum chování uživatelů ICT v oblasti bezpečnosti perspektivou sociálních věd, práva a informatiky
Investor: Masaryk University, INTERDISCIPLINARY - Interdisciplinary research projects
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