Home // International Journal On Advances in Software, volume 12, numbers 1 and 2, 2019 // View article
Authors:
Thomas M. Prinz
Sebastian Apel
Raphael Bernhardt
Jan Plötner
Anja Vetterlein
Keywords: Survey; Architecture; Model; Coast; Tools
Abstract:
Surveys are used in empirical sciences to answer research questions. Such surveys can be separated into five phases (e. g., planning and data collection), where each phase shares information with each other. Since the interdependencies between the phases are sometimes complex, it is helpful to have a software system, which supports each phase of a survey. There already exist such systems, which cover all of the phases. However, the implementations of the phases have usually strong limits; a more individual handling of the phases has to be done in external tools. But an external handling of the information would disrupt the links between the phases. The merging of the phases become a cumbersome task. This was one reason to build the new survey and report tool Coast. This paper presents a realization of the advanced requirements on this new survey system. The system keeps the links between the phases intact and is able to distribute surveys on different devices, e. g., paper and web. The focus on the meta-model of surveys makes that possible. The model is derived as a mathematical and as a data model. The data model builds a domain-specific language in order to construct the necessary parts of a survey. The architecture with its components and services is built around this language. Mainly, the architecture describes how the model of surveys is transferred and compiled. Its benefits and disadvantages provide lessons learned for other researchers and developers.
Pages: 152 to 165
Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2019. Used with permission.
Publication date: June 30, 2019
Published in: journal
ISSN: 1942-2628