Background: A recent set of guidelines for software engineering systematic literature reviews (SLRs) includes a list of quality criteria obtained from the literature. The guidelines suggest that the list can be used to construct a tailored set of questions to evaluate the quality of primary studies. Aim: This paper aims to evaluate whether the list of quality criteria help researchers construct tailored quality checklists. Method: We undertook a participant-observer case study to investigate the list of quality criteria. The “case” in this study was the planning stage of a systematic literature review on unit testing. Results: The checklists in our SLR guidelines do not provide sufficient help with the construction of a quality checklist for a specific SLR either for novices or for experienced researchers. However, the checklists are reasonably complete and lead to the use of a common terminology for quality questions selected for a specific systematic literature review. Conclusions: The guidelines document should be amended to include a much shorter generic checklist. Researchers might find it useful to adopt a team-based process for quality checklist construction and provide suggestions for answering quality checklist questions.
Content
Author and article information
Contributors
Barbara A. Kitchenham
O. Pearl Brereton
David Budgen
Zhi Li
Conference
Publication date:
April
2009
Publication date
(Print):
April
2009
Pages: 1-10
Affiliations
[0001]School of Computing and Mathematics, Keele University, Keele, Staffordshire ST5 5BG,
UK
[0002]Department of Computer Science, Durham University, Durham, Science Laboratories
South Road, Durham City, DH1 3LE, UK