Expert Involvement in Secondary Studies in Software Engineering

This repository contains the replication package and supporting materials for the paper:

“Expert Involvement in Secondary Studies: Impacts on Protocol Definition”

Abstract

Secondary studies (SS) are widely used in software engineering due to their rigor and transparency. Several stages are challenging for novice researchers (e.g., protocol definition), while less problematic for experts. Although recommended, the expert involvement in SS remains underexplored.
This paper provides an overview of how expert involvement impacts SS, especially in protocol definition. A Delphi study with 35 novices and 5 experts, after two rounds, achieved consensus. Expert participation is essential to define the protocol, especially in the most sensitive elements (e.g., search string). Novice researchers noted a gain in confidence, improvement of protocol quality, and reduction of rework, while experts noted gains in rigor, bias reduction, and reproducibility.

Repository Contents

The repository includes all instruments and synthesized data used in the study:

• expertQuestionnaire.pdf
  Questionnaire administered to expert participants during the Delphi study.

• noviceQuestionaire.pdf
  Questionnaire administered to novice researchers during the Delphi study.

• expertDataSynthesis.xlsx
  Synthesized and analyzed responses from expert participants.

• noviceDataSynthesis.xlsx
  Synthesized and analyzed responses from novice participants.

• LICENSE.txt
  License file describing the terms of reuse.

Purpose

This repository aims to:

• Support transparency and reproducibility of the study
• Enable reuse of questionnaires and data synthesis structures
• Assist researchers interested in expert involvement in secondary studies
• Serve as a reference for protocol definition practices in secondary studies

License

All materials in this repository are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

You are free to:

• Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
• Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially

Under the following condition:

• Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.

See the LICENSE.txt file for full license details.

Citation

If you use this repository in your research, please cite the corresponding paper.