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arXiv 2110.09366cs.SE
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软件仓库挖掘研究中术语实验的使用与误用

Use and Misuse of the Term Experiment in Mining Software Repositories Research

Claudia Ayala, Burak Turhan, Xavier Franch, Natalia Juristo

摘要:

在软件工程(SE)中,挖掘软件仓库(MSR)的重要性和重要性为广泛的实证研究带来了新的机遇和挑战。然而,MSR研究人员似乎很难将他们使用的经验方法描述为现有的经验SE知识体系。MSR实验尤其如此。为了证明MSR实验的特殊性及其与迄今为止SE中传统上承认的实验的差异,我们引出了将实验与其他类型的实证研究区分开来的标志,并描述了MSR实验的标志和类型。我们分析了从小规模系统映射研究中获得的MSR文献,以评估MSR中术语实验的使用。我们发现,19%声称是实验的论文实际上根本不是实验,而是观察性研究,所以他们以误导的方式使用这个术语。在剩下的81%的论文中,只有一篇提到了真正的受控实验,而其他的则代表了有限控制的实验。MSR的研究人员往往会忽视这些局限性,从而影响对研究结果的解释。我们提供建议和见解,以支持改进MSR实验。

英文摘要:

The significant momentum and importance of Mining Software Repositories (MSR) in Software Engineering (SE) has fostered new opportunities and challenges for extensive empirical research. However, MSR researchers seem to struggle to characterize the empirical methods they use into the existing empirical SE body of knowledge. This is especially the case of MSR experiments. To provide evidence on the special characteristics of MSR experiments and their differences with experiments traditionally acknowledged in SE so far, we elicited the hallmarks that differentiate an experiment from other types of empirical studies and characterized the hallmarks and types of experiments in MSR. We analyzed MSR literature obtained from a small-scale systematic mapping study to assess the use of the term experiment in MSR. We found that 19% of the papers claiming to be an experiment are indeed not an experiment at all but also observational studies, so they use the term in a misleading way. From the remaining 81% of the papers, only one of them refers to a genuine controlled experiment while the others stand for experiments with limited control. MSR researchers tend to overlook such limitations, compromising the interpretation of the results of their studies. We provide recommendations and insights to support the improvement of MSR experiments.

机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来,可能存在错误,请以论文正文为准。

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