RT Journal Article
T1 Reliability in software engineering qualitative research through Inter-Coder Agreement
A1 González Prieto, José Ángel
A1 Perez, Jorge
A1 Diaz, Jessica
A1 López Fernández, Daniel
AB The research on empirical software engineering that uses qualitative data analysis is increasing. However, most of them do not deepen into the validity of the findings, specifically in the reliability of coding in which these methodologies rely on. This paper aims to establish a novel theoretical framework that enables a methodological approach for conducting this validity analysis through Inter-Coder Agreement (ICA), based on the use of coefficients to measure the degree of agreement in collaborative coding. We systematically review several existing variants of Krippendorff’s  coefficients and provide a novel common mathematical framework to unify them. Finally, this paper illustrates the use of this theoretical framework in a large case study on DevOps culture. We expect that this work will help researchers who are committed to measuring consensus with quantitative techniques in collaborative coding, conducted as part of a qualitative research, to improve the rigor of their findings.
PB Elsevier
SN 0164-1212
YR 2023
FD 2023-08
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/104004
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/104004
LA eng
NO González-Prieto, Ángel, et al. Reliability in software engineering qualitative research through inter-coder agreement. Journal of Systems and Software, 2023, vol. 202, p. 111707.
NO 2023 Acuerdos transformativos CRUE
DS Docta Complutense
RD 6 abr 2025