Support mechanisms to conduct empirical studies in software engineering

Abstract

Context: Empirical studies are gaining recognition in the Software Engineering (SE) research community. In order to foster empirical research, it is essential understand the environments, guidelines, process, and other mechanisms available to support these studies in SE. Goal: Identifying the mechanisms used to support the empirical strategies adopted by the researches in the major Empirical Software Engineering (ESE) scientific venues. Method: We performed a systematic mapping study that included all full papers published at EASE, ESEM and ESEJ since their first editions. A total of 898 studies were selected. Results: We provide the full list of identified support mechanisms and the strategies that uses them. The most commonly mechanisms used to support the empirical strategies were two sets of guidelines, one to secondary studies and another to experiments. The most reported empirical strategies are experiments and case studies. Conclusions: The use of empirical methods in SE has increased over the years but many studies do not apply these methods nor use mechanisms to guide their research. Therefore, the list of support mechanisms, where and how they were applied is a major asset to the SE community. Such asset can foster empirical studies aiding the choice regarding which strategies and mechanisms to use in a research. Also, we identified new perspectives and gaps that foster the development of resources to aid empirical studies.

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