Empirical strategies in software engineering research: a literature survey

Abstract

Context: The Software Engineering (SE) research continues to gain strength and interest for researchers considering the need to apply rigor and scientific validity to research results. Objective: Establishing an overview of the topic through a classification scheme of publications and structure the field of interest. Method: We conducted a Systematic Mapping Study, including articles published until 2019, that report at least one study of empirical strategies in SE. Results: 80 initial sets of studies were selected and analyzed, identifying: i) empirical strategy type used and ii) Software Engineering hypotheses types used. Also, 20 papers of the set of studies for mapping were selected and analyzed, identifying 17 empirical strategies and 11 main characteristics to address the empirical research inception in SE. Conclusions: We corroborate that the selection of an empirical strategy in Software Engineering research depends on the nature and scope of the research and on the resources that the researcher has at that moment, in addition to the degree of scientific and methodological knowledge that he has to carry out an empirical study. It is necessary to continue studying in-depth the behavior and nature of the empirical strategies in Software Engineering research that allows strengthening the scientific taxonomy in SE, besides walking towards the automation of the experimental process.