| Title | Developing search strategies for detecting relevant experiments |
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| Author(s) | Dieste, Oscar and Griman, Anna and Juristo, Natalia |
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| Details | Article: 2008 |
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| Abstract | Our goal is to analyze the optimality of search strategies for use in systematic reviews of software engineering experiments. Studies retrieval is an important problem in any evidence-based discipline. This question has not been examined for evidence-based software engineering as yet. We have run several searches exercising different terms denoting experiments to evaluate their recall and precision. Based on our evaluation, we propose using a high recall strategy when there are plenty of resources or the results need to be exhaustive. For any other case, we propose optimal, or even acceptable, search strategies. As a secondary goal, we have analysed trends and weaknesses in terminology used in articles reporting software engineering experiments. We have found that it is impossible for a search strategy to retrieve 100% of the experiments of interest (as happens in other experimental disciplines), because of the shortage of reporting standards in the community. |
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| DOI | http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10664-008-9091-7 |
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| BibTex | View Citation |
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| Topics | Methodology, Secondary Study, Software Engineering |
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