Abstract
Empirical studies in software engineering provide a systematic way of evaluating theories, languages, concepts, tools or methodologies, considering the industrial context in which they are applied. The course will prepare students by examining how to plan, conduct and report on empirical studies in software engineering. The course will cover all of the principal methods applicable to software engineering (controlled experiment, case studies, surveys, systematic literature reviews, and ethnography) and will describe quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis, including hypothesis testing and grounded theory. To showcase the different methods, the course will critically review representative examples of published work. At the end of the course, the students will be able to approach real-world research problems in a scientifically sound way, and contribute to theory building in software engineering research.