Is Human Factors Being Studied in Software Testing?: Review of the Literature

Software engineering is a human-centric activity influenced by human aspects such as age, gender, culture, language, attitudes, behaviors, and skills. While many of the studies in the software engineering area focused on the effect of human aspects in requirement engineering, design, and software development, only a limited number of studies are available investigating the relationship between human aspects and software testing. This study aims to explore the state of the art of human aspects in software testing, particularly to identify human factors studied in previous studies and how those human aspects affect software testing activities. A literature review was conducted on live reputable online databases, and we considered studies from 1994 to 2023. As a result, a total of 38 primary studies were identified. From the 38 studies, test execution was found to be the most researched software testing area related to human aspects, while test design and defect reporting were found to be the least researched. Among the seven categories of human aspects consisting of personality, experience, knowledge, hard skills, soft skills, personal characteristics, and teamwork values that we found, personality was the most studied. The results of this work are of interest to researchers in human-centric software engineering, particularly in software testing. Additionally, software organizations or employers can use the findings to support recruitment and staff management or improvise software testing processes for better software quality.