Social Loafing Among Members of Undergraduate Software Engineering Groups: Persistence of Perception Seven Years After

Social Loafing is the term used by social scientists to describe the tendency of an individual to decrease efforts when working in a group compared to when working alone. This behavioral tendency of a member has been known to negatively affect the performance of groups. Researchers, however, found out that there are various precursors to social loafing. To be able to design better computer science courses, we would like to find out if social loafing and its precursors exist in undergraduate groups that were organized for solving computing problems. We found out from 239 students in 2008 that the precursors task visibility, distributive justice, and intrinsic task involvement were negatively associated with social loafing while dominance, aggression and sucker effect each were positively correlated. Seven years after, we surveyed 169 undergraduate students who are enrolled in various courses. They were members of software engineering groups formed to solve various real-world computational problems by implementing software projects as part of the requirements of the course. This time, our analysis show that task visibility is negatively associated with social loafing while contributions, dominance, aggression and sucker effect are positively correlated. We further found out that perception of social loafing exists and still persists among members of computer programming groups. Compared to our 2008 analysis, we provide in this paper detailed analysis based on demographic parameters such as gender, course taken, age group, type of residence (urban or rural), and region of residence. The implication of this result is that aside from the usual problems that an instructor faces in teaching software engineering-related courses, the presence of social loafing also adds to the impediment of teaching effectiveness. Thus, it is imperative that instructors and course designers consider the implications associated with social loafing when designing group projects.