Research methodologies
Reviewed: 2026-01-07
SERL focuses on making software engineering evidence more trustworthy, findable, and useful in practice. The group strengthens how empirical software engineering studies are planned, appraised, and reported so stakeholders of software-intensive products and services can make decisions with confidence. Quality and credibility are recurring our group guiding principles. Ethical and human factors receive explicit attention, including authorship ethics, 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 so artifacts are reusable, and offers practical guidance for qualitative work. The group also examines theoretical lenses (e.g., technology acceptance in SE) to connect measures with behaviour in real organizations, and revisits 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.