Qualitative Research Methods in Software Engineering: Past, Present, and Future

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Qualitative_Research_Methods.pdf (2.15 MB)

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https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10873003

Permanent Link

https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2025.3538751
 http://hdl.handle.net/11603/37798

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UMBC Information Systems Department
UMBC Center for Women in Technology (CWIT)
UMBC College of Engineering and Information Technology Dean's Office
UMBC Faculty Collection

Author/Creator

Author/Creator ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6588-9830

Date

2025

Type of Work

journal articles
postprints
Text

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

Seaman, Carolyn, Rashina Hoda, and Robert Feldt. "Qualitative Research Methods in Software Engineering: Past, Present, and Future". IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 2025, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2025.3538751.

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© 2025 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.

Subjects

Qualitative Research
Software engineering
Data collection
Face recognition
Training
Guidelines
Research Methods
Software Engineering
Interviews
Software
Sociology
Data analysis
Industries

Abstract

The paper entitled “Qualitative Methods in Empirical Studies of Software Engineering” by Carolyn Seaman was published in TSE in 1999. It has been chosen as one of the most influential papers from the third decade of TSE’s 50 years history. In this retrospective, the authors discuss the evolution of the use of qualitative methods in software engineering research, the impact it’s had on research and practice, and reflections on what is coming and deserves attention.