This paper reports on the results of a 2017 survey conducted by email and web of members of the U.S. National Postdoctoral Association regarding their use of software in research and their training regarding software development. The responses show that that 95% of respondents use research software. Of all the respondents, 63% state they could not do their research without research software, 31% could do it but with more effort, and 6% would not find a significant difference in their research without research software. In addition, 54% of respondents have not received any training in software development, though all respondents who develop software for researchers have received either self-taught or formal software development training.

{"references": ["https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23538", "https://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2016-09-12-its-impossible-conduct-research-without-software-say-7-out-10-uk-researchers", "https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14809", "https://doi.org/10.1109/SECSE.2009.5069155", "https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.843606", "https://www.surveygizmo.com/survey-blog/survey-response-rates/"]}

This paper was submitted to WSSSPE5.1 - http://wssspe.researchcomputing.org.uk/wssspe5-1/ The final accepted version is https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.5328442