Tutorial Debriefing: Applied Statistical Causal Inference in Requirements Engineering

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Frattini, Julian, Heyn, Hans-Martin, Feldt, Robert, Torkar, Richard
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Frattini, Julian
Heyn, Hans-Martin
Feldt, Robert
Torkar, Richard
author_facet Frattini, Julian
Heyn, Hans-Martin
Feldt, Robert
Torkar, Richard
contents As any scientific discipline, the software engineering (SE) research community strives to contribute to the betterment of the target population of our research: software producers and consumers. We will only achieve this betterment if we manage to transfer the knowledge acquired during research into practice. This transferal of knowledge may come in the form of tools, processes, and guidelines for software developers. However, the value of these contributions hinges on the assumption that applying them causes an improvement of the development process, user experience, or other performance metrics. Such a promise requires evidence of causal relationships between an exposure or intervention (i.e., the contributed tool, process or guideline) and an outcome (i.e., performance metrics). A straight-forward approach to obtaining this evidence is via controlled experiments in which a sample of a population is randomly divided into a group exposed to the new tool, process, or guideline, and a control group. However, such randomized control trials may not be legally, ethically, or logistically feasible. In these cases, we need a reliable process for statistical causal inference (SCI) from observational data.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_03875
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Tutorial Debriefing: Applied Statistical Causal Inference in Requirements Engineering
Frattini, Julian
Heyn, Hans-Martin
Feldt, Robert
Torkar, Richard
Software Engineering
As any scientific discipline, the software engineering (SE) research community strives to contribute to the betterment of the target population of our research: software producers and consumers. We will only achieve this betterment if we manage to transfer the knowledge acquired during research into practice. This transferal of knowledge may come in the form of tools, processes, and guidelines for software developers. However, the value of these contributions hinges on the assumption that applying them causes an improvement of the development process, user experience, or other performance metrics. Such a promise requires evidence of causal relationships between an exposure or intervention (i.e., the contributed tool, process or guideline) and an outcome (i.e., performance metrics). A straight-forward approach to obtaining this evidence is via controlled experiments in which a sample of a population is randomly divided into a group exposed to the new tool, process, or guideline, and a control group. However, such randomized control trials may not be legally, ethically, or logistically feasible. In these cases, we need a reliable process for statistical causal inference (SCI) from observational data.
title Tutorial Debriefing: Applied Statistical Causal Inference in Requirements Engineering
topic Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.03875