Survey Results

 User Research Part 2

I was quite surprised by the number of participants who didn't know enough about the gender pay gap (52.5%), followed by 40% saying yes there is a gender pay gap in the tech sector and 7.5% saying no. From my survey, it was particularly prevalent to me that is nearly half of the participants have experienced gender bias or discrimination in the workplace/education: 47.5% yes and 52.5% no. Participants answered what features they expect to see on the app and which feature they would find most useful. 

Top 5 expectations on what to include in the app: 

1. Coding Challenges
2. Coding Tips and Articles 
3. Profile to track code progress
4. Being able to unlock challenges and earn rewards 
5. Forum

I compared my survey results with the survey report from Women in Tech, this survey was linked in an email from Sarah Wood who is the Digital Marketing Executive at Women in Tech. They surveyed over 1,000 women who work in the technology sector about their thoughts and opinions on the gender gap in technology. (Women in Tech, 2019) Half of the women surveyed (52%) said that they have experienced gender bias or discrimination in the workplace, which is similar to my own results. Also, 78% of women believe that there is a gender pay gap in the tech sector with males earning a higher salary which is nearly double the result I got and more people were aware of this going on this could be to do with that they all worked in the tech sector so knew more about it. 

Moreover, they asked the question why are women put off entering the technology industry? 

I did not ask this question in my survey so it was good to look at other research done and to understand more about the reasoning behind why women may be put off. 22% saying there are fewer opportunities for senior roles/promotion, today we are able to do more through technology to increase awareness of this and even tackle these problems with technology. 

The results of the gender imbalance question above were quite surprising as 70% said there is a gender imbalance in their current organisation. Although they are more women in tech there is still a long way to go with this.

Limitations

A total of 40 participants completed the survey and it would have been valuable to gain more responses in order to make my results more accurate. "While email and online surveys have the same advantages and disadvantages as computer-based data collection a few additional challenges are thrown up. The challenges relate to the sampling, response rate, non-respondent characteristics, maintenance of confidentiality, and ethical issues" (Nayak and Narayan, 2019, p.33) In order to manage confidentiality the survey was anonymous however getting participants was hard despite posting on LinkedIn, social media and having my connections share it within their companies. In conclusion, I could have incorporated the location to see the difference in results on a local or global scale and see if this related to the number of events able in the area and community as my app will focus on building a community. 

Bibliography:

Nayak, M. and Narayan, K.A., 2019. Strengths and Weakness of Online Surveys. Journal Of Humanities. 24(5), pp.31-38. 

Women in Tech. 2019. Women in Tech Survey. [Online]. [Accessed 25 November 2019]. Available from: https://womenintech.co.uk/doc/Women-in-Tech-Survey.pdf