Part II. Evaluation: Field Studies

Tosun-Misirli, Ayşe; Bener, Ayşe; Çağlayan, Bora; Çalikli, Gül and Turhan, Burak (2014). Part II. Evaluation: Field Studies. In: Robillard, Martin P.; Maalej, Walid; Walker, Robert J. and Zimmerman, Thomas eds. Recommendation Systems in Software Engineering. Springer, pp. 329–355.

Abstract

One way to implement and evaluate the effectiveness of recommendation systems for software engineering is to conduct field studies. Field studies are important as they are the extension of the laboratory experiments into real life situations of organizations and/or society. They bring greater realism to the phenomenon that is under study. However, field studies require following a rigorous research approach with many challenges attached, such as difficulties in implementing the research design, achieving sufficient control, replication, validity and reliability. In practice, another challenge is to find organizations who are prepared to be experimented on. In this chapter, we provide details regarding step-by-step process in the construction and deployment of recommendation systems for software engineering in the field. We also emphasize three main challenges (organizational, data, design) encountered during field studies in both general and specific to software organizations.

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