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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…
Controlled experiments are a core research method in software engineering (SE) for validating causal claims. However, recruiting a sample of participants that represents the intended target population is often difficult or expensive, which…
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…
Context: Empirical Software Engineering (ESE) drives innovation in SE through qualitative and quantitative studies. However, concerns about the correct application of empirical methodologies have existed since the 2006 Dagstuhl seminar on…
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…
[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…
Context: Advancements in machine learning (ML) lead to a shift from the traditional view of software development, where algorithms are hard-coded by humans, to ML systems materialized through learning from data. Therefore, we need to…
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…
Peer review is the main mechanism by which the software engineering community assesses the quality of scientific results. However, the rapid growth of paper submissions in software engineering venues has outpaced the availability of…
In the dynamic field of Software Engineering (SE), where practice is constantly evolving and adapting to new technologies, conducting research is a daunting quest. This poses a challenge for researchers: how to stay relevant and effective…
Context: Empirical studies in software engineering are typically centered on human subjects, ranging from novice to experienced developers. The experience of these individuals is a key context factor that should be properly characterized…
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: Reaching out to professional software developers is a crucial part of empirical software engineering research. One important method to investigate the state of practice is survey research. As drawing a random sample of…
Software engineering research is evolving and papers are increasingly based on empirical data from a multitude of sources, using statistical tests to determine if and to what degree empirical evidence supports their hypotheses. To…
Background: Given the social aspects of Software Engineering (SE), in the last twenty years, researchers from the field started using research methods common in social sciences such as case study, ethnography, and grounded theory. More…
Online research platforms, such as Prolific, offer rapid access to diverse participant pools but also pose unique challenges in participant qualification and skill verification. Previous studies reported mixed outcomes and challenges in…
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] 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…
Diversity and inclusion are necessary prerequisites for shaping technological innovation that benefits society as a whole. A common indicator of diversity consideration is the representation of different social groups among software…
Background: The need for empirical investigations in software engineering is growing. Many researchers nowadays, conduct and validate their solutions using empirical research. Survey is one empirical method which enables researchers to…