Cohort studies in software engineering : A vision of the future

Abstract

Background. Most Mining Software Repositories (MSR) studies cannot obtain causal relations because they are not controlled experiments. The use of cohort studies as defined in epidemiology could help to overcome this shortcoming. Objective. Propose the adoption of cohort studies in MSR research in particular and empirical Software Engineering (SE) in general. Method. We run a preliminary literature review to show the current state of the practice of cohort studies in SE. We explore how cohort studies overcome the issues that prevent the identification of causality in this type of non-experimental designs. Results. The basic mechanism used by cohort studies to try to obtain causality consists of controlling potentially confounding variables. This is articulated by means of different techniques. Conclusion. Cohort studies seem to be a promising approach to be used in MSR in particular and SE in general.