Related papers: Inferencing into the void: problems with implicit …
Should students be used as experimental subjects in software engineering? Given that students are in many cases readily available and cheap it is no surprise that the vast majority of controlled experiments in software engineering use them.…
Background. Software Engineering (SE) researchers extensively perform experiments with human subjects. Well-defined samples are required to ensure external validity. Samples are selected \textit{purposely} or by \textit{convenience},…
Population analysis is crucial for ensuring that empirical software engineering (ESE) research is representative and its findings are valid. Yet, there is a persistent gap between sampling processes and the holistic examination of…
In a recent article, Falessi et al. (2017) call for a deeper understanding of the pros and cons of using students and professionals in experiments. The authors state: we have observed too many times that our papers were rejected because we…
Context: Software practitioners are a primary provider of information for field studies in software engineering. Research typically recruits practitioners through some kind of sampling. But sampling may not in itself recruit credible…
As any scientific discipline, the software engineering (SE) research community strives to contribute to the betterment of the target population of our research: software producers and consumers. We will only achieve this betterment if we…
Context: Using student subjects in empirical studies has been discussed extensively from a methodological perspective in Software Engineering (SE), but there is a lack of similar discussion surrounding ethical aspects of doing so. As…
Statistical thinking partially depends upon an iterative process by which essential features of a problem setting are identified and mapped onto an abstract model or archetype, and then translated back into the context of the original…
CONTEXT: There is growing interest in establishing software engineering as an evidence-based discipline. To that end, replication is often used to gain confidence in empirical findings, as opposed to reproduction where the goal is showing…
The chapter supports educators and postgraduate students in understanding the role of simulation in software engineering research based on the authors' experience. This way, it includes a background positioning simulation-based studies in…
This note highlights the importance of investigating diversity aspects in combination in empirical research. It draws on the psychological discourse and suggests why and how software engineering scholars can use the aspect of diversity in…
Computation is a central aspect of 21st century physics practice; it is used to model complicated systems, to simulate impossible experiments, and to analyze mountains of data. Physics departments and their faculty are increasingly…
While mastered by some, good scientific writing practices within Empirical Software Engineering (ESE) research appear to be seldom discussed and documented. Despite this, these practices are implicit or even explicit evaluation criteria of…
A recurring problem in software development is incorrect decision making on the techniques, methods and tools to be used. Mostly, these decisions are based on developers' perceptions about them. A factor influencing people's perceptions is…
Empirical research in reverse engineering and software protection is crucial for evaluating the efficacy of methods designed to protect software against unauthorized access and tampering. However, conducting such studies with professional…
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…
Data representativity is crucial when drawing inference from data through machine learning models. Scholars have increased focus on unraveling the bias and fairness in models, also in relation to inherent biases in the input data. However,…
We propose an inference procedure for estimators defined by mathematical programming problems, focusing on the important special cases of linear programming (LP) and quadratic programming (QP). In these settings, the coefficients in both…
[Context] In software engineering research, emphasis is given to sound evaluations of new approaches. While industry surveys or industrial case studies are preferred to evaluate industrial applicability, controlled experiments with student…
The growing emphasis on studying equity, diversity, and inclusion within software engineering has amplified the need to explore hidden populations within this field. Exploring hidden populations becomes important to obtain invaluable…