EMIP: The Eye Movements in Programming Dataset

Bednarik, R.¹, Busjahn, T.², Gibaldi, A.³, Ahadi, A.⁴, Bielikova, M., Crosby, M.⁵, Essig, K.⁶, Fagerholm, F.⁷, Jbara, A.⁸, Lister, R.⁴, Orlov, P.⁹, Paterson, J.¹⁰, Sharif, B.¹¹, Sirkia, T.⁷, Stelovsky, J.⁵, Tvarozek, J.¹², Vrzakova, H.¹³, van der Linde, I.¹⁴

¹ University of Eastern Finland, Finland
² HTW Berlin, Germany
³ University of Genova, Italy
⁴ University of Technology Sydney, Australia
⁵ University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, USA
⁶ Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences, Germany
⁷ University of Helsinki, Finland
⁸ Augusta University, GA, USA
⁹ Imperial College London, UK
¹⁰ Glasgow Caledonian University, UK
¹¹ University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA
¹² Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Slovakia
¹³ University of Colorado, Boulder, USA
¹⁴ Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK

A large dataset that contains the eye movements of N=216 programmers of different experience levels captured during two code comprehension tasks is presented. Data are grouped in terms of programming expertise (from none to high) and other demographic descriptors. Data were collected through an international collaborative effort that involved eleven research teams across eight countries on four continents. The same eye tracking apparatus and software was used for the data collection. The Eye Movements in Programming (EMIP) dataset is freely available for download. The varied metadata in the EMIP dataset provides fertile ground for the analysis of gaze behavior and may be used to make novel insights about code comprehension

Cite: Bednarik, R., Busjahn, T., Gibaldi, A., Ahadi, A., Bielikova, M., Crosby, M., … & van der Linde, I. (2020). EMIP: The eye movements in programming dataset. Science of Computer Programming, 198, 102520. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scico.2020.102520