Home // ICSEA 2014, The Ninth International Conference on Software Engineering Advances // View article

An Approach and a Tool for Systematic Review Research

Authors:
Manuel Gonçalves da Silva Neto
Walquiria Castelo Branco Lins
Eric Bruno Perazzo Mariz

Keywords: Systematic Review; Systematic Mapping; Support Tool

Abstract:
Systematic Reviews and Systematic Mappings are widely used in medicine in an area called evidence-based studies. Recently, these techniques have been adapted and used in secondary studies in the area of Software Engineering and Systems. Sorting and synthesizing information in a particular research area by analysis of their primary studies, both involve both extensive work and researcher dedication. Adapting techniques applied in evidence-based studies in the medical field to software engineering led to an approach, which divides Systematic Review tasks into three main phases, namely, planning, conduct of review itself and reporting the results. Unlike in the area of medicine, in which there are many research groups and methodologies to support these tasks, researchers in the area of software engineering still lack tools and methods that support the implementation of these activities and, in general, they need to use software that was not designed for this purpose. This paper presents an approach based on Biolchini's proccess, using checkpoints techniques, to assist in maintaining of the main objectives of the review process; these tasks were supported by a management software. The software facilitates the execution of repetitive tasks of recording, quantifying and classifying of data in accordance with a predefined research protocol in the planning phase, thereby enabling studies to be better organized and an overview to be obtained in the early stages of the review. We used a Systematic Review theme to validate the approach and supporting tool. This article shows that by visualizing and classifying research data while still at the initial stages of a Systematic Review, problems may be identified in the design of the protocol (planning phase), which otherwise would only be detected in the final stages, when results are being generated.

Pages: 191 to 195

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2014

Publication date: October 12, 2014

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4235

ISBN: 978-1-61208-367-4

Location: Nice, France

Dates: from October 12, 2014 to October 16, 2014