Evidence-based Practices Informing Computing (EPIC)

在研究中使用基于证据的做法提供了一种手段，从一组（主要）实证研究的结果汇总，以获得一个感兴趣的现象的“更大的图片”。循证研究的目标是确保基于循证实践（如系统性文献综述）结果的实践和标准（通常被称为“二次研究”）将尽可能客观和公正，不应受到个别研究结果的不当影响。这种方法现在广泛用于临床医学，以及已被采用用于这样的不同领域，如教育，护理和助产，图书馆，和环境科学。我们自己一直在研究如何使这种方法适应软件工程的特点--经验研究的数量较少，涉及人员的个人技能水平使其复杂化，并且很少有良好的索引，因此很难在系统的基础上找到它们。尽管有这些因素，我们（和其他人）已经证明，在软件工程中采用循证实践是非常实际的，目前的建议旨在超越最初的调查，以解决这些问题，如在哪里可以最有效地部署，研究结果可能会受到哪些限制，以及研究人员，从业者和决策者可能会被说服（有证据！）这种方法的价值？要做到这一点，我们建议采用多案例，嵌入式的案例研究的形式，我们的研究方法，汇集了几个不同的案例研究的结果。此外，这将纳入参与者-观察员框架，因为我们作为外部观察员是不切实际的。通过采用这种方法来使用案例研究，我们希望能够确定如何有效地使用基于证据的做法可能是一种手段，提供坚实的证据，软件工程师，管理人员和政策制定者。

The use of evidence-based practices in research provides a means of aggregating the outcomes from a set of (primary) empirical studies, in order to obtain a 'bigger picture' of a phenomenon of interest. The goal for evidence-based research is to ensure that practices and standards that are based on the outcomes from evidence-based practices such as Systematic Literature Review (often termed 'secondary studies') will be as objective and unbiased as possible, and should not be unduly influenced by the results from individual studies.This approach is now used extensively in clinical medicine, as well as having been adopted for use in such diverse domains as education, nursing & midwifery, librarianship, and environmental science. We ourselves have been investigating how the approach may be adapted to the characteristics of software engineering--where empirical studies are fewer in number, complicated by individual skill levels of those involved, and rarely well-indexed, making it difficult to find them on a systematic basis. Despite these factors, we (and others) have demonstrated that it is quite practical to employ evidence-based practices in software engineering, and the present proposal is intended to move beyond that initial investigation to address such questions as where they might be most effectively deployed, what limitations upon the outcomes of studies might arise from the characteristics of the domain, and how researchers, practitioners and decision-makes might be persuaded (with evidence!) of the value of this approach?To do this, we propose to adopt a multiple-case, embedded form of case study for our research methodology, drawing together the outcomes of several different case studies. In addition, this will be embedded in a participant-observer framework, since it is impractical for us to be external observers. By employing such an approach to the use of case studies, we expect to be able to determine how effective the use of evidence-based practices are likely to be as a means of delivering solid evidence to software engineers, managers and policy-makers.