\label{sec:datamethods}
The survey was constructed as a Google form questionnaire with seven questions and one comment box. Four of the questions were about software use and inspired by the SSI survey:
Do you use software in your research?
Have you had formal training in software development?
Which of these is more common in your work? (on writing one’s own software)
Select any of these that you use regularly to write code for your research. (on most commonly used software tools)
The remaining three questions requested basic demographic information:
What is your field of research?
What is your career stage?
What is the location of your institution?
The survey was opened on December 9, 2014. The attendees of the .Astronomy 6 conference were asked to forward a link to the survey to their home departments, including a prompt to send it on to any other interested astronomer groups. A link to the survey was also posted on the Astronomers Facebook group. The survey received 758 responses on the first day and another 210 during the following day. The data for this work was collected on February 3, 2015. The number of participants at that time was 1145. Three responses from participants who indicated that they work in fields other than astronomy were removed for a final tally of 1142 participants.
The demographics of the sample at the time of collection were the following. Of the 1142 participants, 380 are graduate students, 340 are postdocs, 385 are research scientists and faculty (175 and 200, respectively). The remaining 37 were undergraduate students (10), emeritus professors, support scientists at observatories, adjunct faculty, post-bachelor’s researchers, etc. These 37 “miscellaneous” career levels will be included in the analysis of the full sample but will not be included in any of the other career subgroups. For the analysis, we combine the research scientist and faculty subgroups to create three groups of similar size, roughly corresponding to “early”, “intermediate” and “late” career stages.
In terms of areas of research, 823 participants chose “Observational Astronomy/Astrophysics”, 353 selected “Theoretical Astronomy/Astrophysics”, 130 indicated that they work in astronomical instrumentation and 66 in planetary science. 22 participants did not choose any of these four main categories. Of these, nine participants selected “Other”, three did not choose an area of research, and 10 entered custom values such as physics, astro-statistics, cosmology, astroparticle physics, space physics, etc. Participants were allowed to choose more than one area of research, which is why the numbers for the individual categories add to more than 1142.
The final piece of demographic data we collected was the geographic location of the participants’ home institution. The majority of participants are from the USA (546), followed by Germany (170), UK (90), Australia (69) and Chile (35). 80% of the participants come from these five top countries, with 48% from the USA. The remaining 232 participants come from 41 different countries. The break down is the following:
Netherlands (31), Sweden (21), Argentina (19), Canada (18), Brazil (14), France (13), Spain (12), Italy (11), Poland (9), Mexico (9), Switzerland (9), Israel (6), Denmark (5), Finland (3), India (3), Ireland (3), Portugal (3), Japan (3), United Arab Emirates (2), South Korea (2), South Africa (2), Russia (2), South Korea (2), Belgium (2), Austria (2), New Zealand (2), Greece (1), Lithuania (1), Georgia (1), Malaysia (1), Norway (1), Slovakia (1), Czech Republic (1), China (1), Swaziland (1), Taiwan (1), Turkey (1), Uzbekistan (1), Hungary (1), Vatican (1), Ghana (1).
The geographic distribution of the participants indicates that our methods of circulating the survey were unable to reach a broad base of researchers in Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe. Compared to the IAU membership, the USA is over-represented by a factor of 2.1, Germany by a factor of 2.7, and China is under-represented by a factor of 60. Major contributors to this imbalance are the language of the survey (English) and the method of distribution (social media and friends-of-friends networks). Hence, any conclusions we make will be only applicable to the researchers working in the countries which are predominantly represented.
This survey should not be viewed as a systematically representative sample of the astronomy community. The request to fill out the survey was primarily spread via social networks (i.e., departmental e-mails, Facebook, twitter, etc.), so it is possible that the sample of astronomers surveyed is biased in ways that may affect the results presented below. Given that we are astronomers (not social scientists), we are not trained in methods to address these effects, and therefore simply present the raw results of the survey with no correction for selection bias. That said, the sheer number of responses implies these results represent a significant part of the community. Regardless, we would certainly be happy if this work inspires a more rigorous survey by social scientists with domain-specific expertise.