Ivelina Momcheva edited Training.tex  almost 9 years ago

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The first panel in Figure \ref{fig:train1} shows the answers from all participants. Overall, $8\pm1\%$ of survey participants have received substantial training, $49\pm2\%$ have received a little training and $43\pm2\%$ have received no training. Altogether, $57\pm2\%$ of survey participants have received some training in software development. Across all career levels, only $\sim8\%$ of astronomers have received significant training. Facutly and scientists are slightly more likely to have received no training at $50\pm4\%$ versus $40\pm3\%$ for the more junior groups. Postdocs and graduate students are slightly more likely to have received some training at $53\pm4\%$, relative to faculty and scientists ($42\pm3\%$).  In Figure \ref{fig:crosstrain} we specifically focus on the training of survey participants who, in the previous questions, said that they primarily write their own software (``My own'' option, $\sim33\%$ of the sample). Overall, $40\pm3\%$ of those who write software participants  have received no training and $89\pm5\%$ have received at best a little bit of training. The results for this subset are consistent with the answers from the full sample within the error bars, i.e. astronomers who primarily write their own software do not have more training in software development than everyone else. The results are similar if we also considered the participants who write some of their software (``Both'' option) This is of particular importance because it implies that many astronomers have little to no training in an activity that is a major part of their research work, despite the fact that they nearly always have many years of post-secondary education during which they could have received such training. In Figure \ref{fig:train2} we show the breakdown of answers as a across of research areas. The trends remain the same across all fields.  The breakdown by country (Figure \ref{fig:train3}) shows that the results are similar internationally. The fraction of astronomers with significant training is largely independent of geography. Some geographical variations exist in the fraction of participants who have at least a little training: the USA has the largest fraction with training: $55\pm3\%$, while Australia has the smallest with $35\pm7\%$. Based on these results, we speculate that opportunities to receive at least a little bit of training are more available at US institutions or that more US researches seek out such opportunities.