Software Engineering is a field of so-high socio-technical complexity that the properties (let alone the usefulness) of proposed methods and tools are not at all obvious. We need to evaluate them empirically.

This course introduces two different manners in which one can think about this situation and approach evaluations:

1. A quantitative perspective. This aims at quantified statements about the tools and methods and is based on a positivist epistemological stance and corresponding culture.
2. A qualitative perspective. This aims at making sense of the things that are going on to create the phenomena that give rise to the quantitative outcomes. This perspective is based on an interpretivist epistemological stance and has a culture that values different things.

Both perspectives have different strengths and weaknesses and are suitable for different types of research interest. In this course, we will learn to think in both of these perspectives and to appreciate the different benefits they provide. We will learn what it means that a study has high quality: it has high credibility and high relevance. We will train diagnosing the various quality problems that often reduce credibility or relevance.

We will work through the most common research methods and will discuss real examples (interesting published studies) of each, along with their strengths and weaknesses.

Participants will understand how and when to apply each method and for one of them develop some practical skills by doing so.

Materialien: https://www.mi.fu-berlin.de/w/SE/VorlesungEmpirie2025