Robust Methods for Developer Screening in Rapidly Evolving AI Contexts

The rise of AI-powered tools like ChatGPT enables non-programmers to bypass programming screening questions, undermining internal validity in usable security and privacy, and software engineering studies. Past ChatGPT-resistant tasks proposed static visual questions, which ChatGPT can now circumvent. Therefore, we tested alternative approaches such as video- and audio-based screeners that reveal key information step by step under strict time constraints to distinguish programmers from non-programmers. To this end, we conducted a study with 74 participants across three groups: programmers, non-programmers without AI assistance, and non-programmers using ChatGPT. Our results showed that audio-based screeners were robust against ChatGPT-based cheating, as non-programmers struggled to find correct answers within time limits, whereas programmers demonstrated high accuracy with minimal time pressure. Based on our findings, we recommend six audio-based ChatGPT-resistant screening questions that maximize screening effectiveness and efficiency and suggest a 215-second instrument that includes 95.87% of programmers while excluding 99.69% of non-programmers.