A Method to Assess and Argue for Practical Significance in Software Engineering
| Autor: | Richard Torkar, Neil A. Ernst, Robert Feldt, Francisco Gomes de Oliveira Neto, Lucas Gren, Carlo A. Furia, Per Lenberg |
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| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2022 |
| Předmět: |
FOS: Computer and information sciences
Programvaruteknik Computer science Bayesian probability Testing Bayesian analysis Context (language use) Data modeling Computer Science - Software Engineering Empirical research Statistical significance Relevance (information retrieval) Analytical models statistical significance Cumulative prospect theory Software engineering business.industry Multilevel model Empirical process (process control model) Data models Statistical model Bayes methods Software Engineering (cs.SE) empirical software engineering Statistical analysis business Practical significance Decision making Software |
| Popis: | A key goal of empirical research in software engineering is to assess practical significance, which answers whether the observed effects of some compared treatments show a relevant difference in practice in realistic scenarios. Even though plenty of standard techniques exist to assess statistical significance, connecting it to practical significance is not straightforward or routinely done; indeed, only a few empirical studies in software engineering assess practical significance in a principled and systematic way. In this paper, we argue that Bayesian data analysis provides suitable tools to assess practical significance rigorously. We demonstrate our claims in a case study comparing different test techniques. The case study's data was previously analyzed (Afzal et al., 2015) using standard techniques focusing on statistical significance. Here, we build a multilevel model of the same data, which we fit and validate using Bayesian techniques. Our method is to apply cumulative prospect theory on top of the statistical model to quantitatively connect our statistical analysis output to a practically meaningful context. This is then the basis both for assessing and arguing for practical significance. Our study demonstrates that Bayesian analysis provides a technically rigorous yet practical framework for empirical software engineering. A substantial side effect is that any uncertainty in the underlying data will be propagated through the statistical model, and its effects on practical significance are made clear. Thus, in combination with cumulative prospect theory, Bayesian analysis supports seamlessly assessing practical significance in an empirical software engineering context, thus potentially clarifying and extending the relevance of research for practitioners. 13 pages, 9 figures, 3 tables. Minor rev update |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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