An Empirically Evaluated Checklist for Surveys in Software Engineering
Jefferson Seide Moll\'eri, Kai Petersen, Emilia Mendes

TL;DR
This paper presents a systematically developed checklist for designing and assessing survey research in software engineering, aiming to improve research quality and provide a practical auditing tool.
Contribution
It introduces a new, empirically grounded checklist for survey research in software engineering, validated through expert evaluation and designed to support both design and assessment.
Findings
19 of 38 checklist items were improved after evaluation
The checklist helps audit survey reports and guide survey design
Evaluation revealed limitations in understanding and objectivity
Abstract
Context: Over the past decade Software Engineering research has seen a steady increase in survey-based studies, and there are several guidelines providing support for those willing to carry out surveys. The need for auditing survey research has been raised in the literature. Checklists have been used to assess different types of empirical studies, such as experiments and case studies. Objective: This paper proposes a checklist to support the design and assessment of survey-based research in software engineering grounded in existing guidelines for survey research. We further evaluated the checklist in the research practice context. Method: To construct the checklist, we systematically aggregated knowledge from 14 methodological papers supporting survey-based research in software engineering. We identified the key stages of the survey process and its recommended practices through thematic…
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Taxonomy
TopicsSoftware Engineering Techniques and Practices · Software Engineering Research · Open Source Software Innovations
