Toward the use of blog articles as a source of evidence for software engineering research

Abstract

Background: Blog articles have potential value as a source of practitioner-generated evidence to complement already accepted sources of evidence in software engineering research e.g. interviews and surveys. To be valuable to research, a method for extracting the high quality articles from the vast quantity available needs to be developed. Objective: To better define the benefits and challenges, scope the problem, develop a set of criteria for evaluating blog articles to be used in the method, and propose research questions. Method: We conducted a two-phase pilot study, using a preliminary set of criteria, to explore the challenges of classifying blog articles. We analyse credibility criteria that have been used in previous research, and cross reference those criteria with previous research in evidence-based software engineering. Results: Based on our analysis, we decide that blog articles need to be rigorous, relevant, well written and experience based for them to be considered credible to researchers. Conclusion: Our work provides an overview of the problem domain, as well as presenting criteria and suggested measurements for these criteria. These can be used by others to find blog articles of potential value to their research.