Increasing Validity Through Replication: An Illustrative TDD Case
This work incrementally improves reliability in software engineering experiments by identifying moderators that affect TDD outcomes.
The authors replicated a Test-Driven-Development (TDD) experiment to address validity threats, finding that differences in results across replications may be due to factors like operationalization of variables, subject allocation, and task conditions.
Context: Software Engineering (SE) experiments suffer from threats to validity that may impact their results. Replication allows researchers building on top of previous experiments' weaknesses and increasing the reliability of the findings. Objective: Illustrating the benefits of replication to increase the reliability of the findings and uncover moderator variables. Method: We replicate an experiment on Test-Driven-Development (TDD) and address some of its threats to validity and those of a previous replication. We compare the replications' results and hypothesize on plausible moderators impacting results. Results: Differences across TDD replications' results might be due to the operationalization of the response variables, the allocation of subjects to treatments, the allowance to work outside the laboratory, the provision of stubs, or the task. Conclusion: Replications allow examining the robustness of the findings, hypothesizing on plausible moderators influencing results, and strengthening the evidence obtained.