Combining empirical results in software engineering

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the techniques used in medical research to combine results from independent empirical studies of a particular phenomenon: meta-analysis and vote-counting. We use an example to illustrate the benefits and limitations of each technique and to indicate the criteria that should be used to guide your choice of technique. Meta-analysis is appropriate for homogeneous studies when raw data or quantitative summary information, e.g. correlation coefficient, are available. It can also be used for heterogeneous studies where the cause of the heterogeneity is due to well-understood partitions in the subject population. In other circumstances, meta-analysis is usually invalid. Although intuitively appealing, vote-counting has a number of serious limitations and should usually be avoided. We suggest that combining study results is unlikely to solve all the problems encountered in empirical software engineering studies, but some of the infrastructure and controls used by medical researchers to improve the quality of their empirical studies would be useful in the field of software engineering.