Related papers: Qualitative software engineering research -- refle…
This paper reports the use of a qualitative methodology for conducting longitudinal case study research on software development. We provide a detailed description and explanation of appropriate methods of qualitative data collection and…
The use of large language models (LLMs) for qualitative analysis is gaining attention in various fields, including software engineering, where qualitative methods are essential for understanding human and social factors. This study aimed to…
Software repositories are rich sources of qualitative artifacts, including source code comments, commit messages, issue descriptions, and documentation. These artifacts offer many interesting insights when analyzed through quantitative…
From its first adoption in the late 80s, qualitative research has slowly but steadily made a name for itself in what was, and perhaps still is, the predominantly quantitative software engineering (SE) research landscape. As part of our…
Background. There are some publications in software engineering research that aim at guiding researchers in assessing validity threats to their studies. Still, many researchers fail to address many aspects of validity that are essential to…
Software engineering is a socio-technical endeavor, and while many of our contributions focus on technical aspects, human stakeholders such as software developers are directly affected by and can benefit from our research and tool…
Representative sampling appears rare in empirical software engineering research. Not all studies need representative samples, but a general lack of representative sampling undermines a scientific field. This article therefore reports a…
This paper explores the intricate challenge of understanding and measuring software engineer behavior. More specifically, we revolve around a central question: How can we enhance our understanding of software engineer behavior? Grounded in…
This paper presents an approach to the study of cognitive activities in collaborative software development. This approach has been developed by a multidisciplinary team made up of software engineers and cognitive psychologists. The basis of…
Case studies are a popular and noteworthy type of research study in software engineering, offering significant potential to impact industry practices by investigating phenomena in their natural contexts. This potential to reach a broad…
This paper presents a tertiary review of software quality measurement research. To conduct this review, we examined an initial dataset of 7,811 articles and found 75 relevant and high-quality secondary analyses of software quality research.…
Empirical software engineering is concerned with measuring, or estimating, both the effort put into the software process and the quality of its product. We defend the idea that measuring process effort and product quality and establishing a…
Background: Despite a long history, numerous laws and regulations, ethics remains an unnatural topic for many software engineering researchers. Poor research ethics may lead to mistrust of research results, lost funding and retraction of…
[Context] Although software development is an inherently human activity, research in software engineering (SE) has long focused mostly on processes and tools, failing to recall about the human factors behind. Even when explored, researchers…
Analysing and improving productivity has been one of the main goals of software engineering research since its beginnings. A plethora of studies has been conducted on various factors that resulted in several models for analysis and…
Background: Philosophers of science including Collins, Feyerabend, Kuhn and Latour have all emphasized the importance of consensus within scientific communities of practice. Consensus is important for maintaining legitimacy with outsiders,…
Qualitative research gives rich insights into the quintessentially human aspects of software engineering as a socio-technical system. Qualitative research spans diverse strategies and methods, from interpretivist, in situ observational…
Software is now a vital scientific instrument, providing the tools for data collection and analysis across disciplines from bioinformatics and computational physics, to the humanities. The software used in research is often home-grown and…
For more than 30 years, it has been claimed that a way to improve software developers' productivity and software quality is to focus on people and to provide incentives to make developers satisfied and happy. This claim has rarely been…
As software engineering research becomes more concerned with the psychological, sociological and managerial aspects of software development, relevant theories from reference disciplines are increasingly important for understanding the…