A Coding Scheme Development Methodology Using Grounded Theory for Qualitative Analysis of Pair Programming

A number of quantitative studies of pair programmin g (the practice of two programmers working together using just one compute r) have partially conflicting results. Qualitative studies are needed to explain what is really going on. We support such studies by taking a grounded theory (GT) appro ach for deriving a coding scheme for the objective conceptual description of specifi c pair programming sessions independent of a particular research goal. The pres ent article explains why our initial attempts at using GT failed and describes how to av oid these difficulties by a predetermined perspective on the data, concept nami ng rules, an analysis results metamodel, and pair coding. These practices may be helpful in all GT situations, particularly those involving very rich data such as video data. We illustrate the operation and usefulness of these practices by real examples derived from our coding work and present a few preliminary hypotheses regar ding pair programming that have surfaced.

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