Potential financial motivations for end-user programming

Research has identified multiple reasons why people do end-user programming but has yet to quantify one of the most basic: making more money. This is an important gap in the literature given the current widespread efforts to promote computational thinking skills, because this education campaign is often linked to the argument that end-user programming skills will contribute to workers' long-term career prospects. Therefore, this paper presents a study investigating how the earnings of workers varied as a function of whether they used spreadsheets/databases and/or did programming at work. Examining survey data from 2003 revealed a positive correlation of earnings against these variables, even after controlling for the occupations of workers. Overall, occupation-adjusted earnings were 14% higher for workers who used spreadsheets/databases and who also did programming, versus those who did neither. These results provoke numerous questions for future research regarding what financial benefits workers can expect to obtain in different settings through end-user programming.