TY - JOUR T1 - Experimental validation in software engineering JF - Information and Software Technology Y1 - 1997 A1 - Zelkowitz, Marvin V A1 - Wallace,Dolores KW - data collection KW - Evaluation KW - experimentation KW - measurement AB - Although experimentation is an accepted approach toward scientific validation in most scientific disciplines, it only recently has gained acceptance within the software development community. In this paper we discuss a 12-model classification scheme for performing experimentation within the software development domain. We evaluate over 600 published papers in the computer science literature and over one hundred papers from other scientific disciplines in order to determine: (1) how well the computer science community is succeeding at validating its theories, and (2) how computer science compares to other scientific disciplines. VL - 39 SN - 0950-5849 UR - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0950584997000256 CP - 11 M3 - 10.1016/S0950-5849(97)00025-6 ER -