Research methodologies
Reviewed: 2026-01-07
SERL focuses on making software engineering evidence more trustworthy, findable, and useful in practice. The group strengthens how we plan, search, appraise, and report empirical work so stakeholders of software-intensive products of and services can make decisions with confidence. Quality and credibility are recurring anchors. The group’s work clarifies what “good” empirical SE looks like, from core quality views and instruments to assess reviews, to overlooked validity threats. Ethical and human factors receive explicit attention - authorship ethics and transparent handling of consent, anonymity, and confidentiality in studies with people.
To improve the usefulness of results, the lab advances clearer reporting of case studies and their identification criteria, promotes FAIR research objects so artifacts are reusable, and offers practical guidance for qualitative work. They also examine theoretical lenses (e.g., technology acceptance in SE) to connect measures with behaviour in real organizations, and revisit experimental designs and analysis choices to draw stronger causal insights.
Together, this work equips practitioners to base decisions on clearer, more complete, and ethically sound evidence, while reducing wasted effort in gathering it.
Current and Future Work
Further efforts will operationalize quality and FAIRness. Reporting standards for case studies and people-centric research will likely mature, reducing ambiguity and bias.