Homework week14: Summary on "Methdology matters: Doing Research in the Behavioral and Social Science" by Joseph E. Mcgrath and on "Writing Good Software Engineering Research papers" by Mary Shaw

Summary on "Methdology matters: Doing Research in the Behavioral and Social Science":

This article highlights three points for research in the behavior and social science. The first point is that all methods have limitaions. Hence, any set of results is limited. The second point is that it is not possible to maximize all desireable features of method in any one study and thus tradeoffs and dilemmas are involves. The third point is that each study must be interpreted in relation to other evidence bearing on the same questions.  This article also illustrats that each piece of information gained through those techniques is not certain and not general. Each piece information is contigent on other information and can only be viwed in the context of the accumulated body of information.

Summary on "Writing Good Software Engineering Research papers":

This article highlights that a good software engineering research paper should answer a number of following questions. The first is: what, precisely, was your contribution. The second is what is your own results. The third is why should the reader believe your results? and the last one is that what concrete evidence shows that your result satisfies your claim. The main point is that how to convince readers using your own results. Those results may be piece information, and thus should be interpreted in an accumulated context.

Compare between them:

Both in social science and software engineering, it is importance to organize your findings or results to convince your readers. Those findings and results may be piece information and need to be accumulated in a certain way to present to readers. So the same problem faced by both social science and software engineering are how to organized seperated results and findings to an accumulated context.

reference:

[1] Joseph E. Mcgrath, "Methdology matters: Doing Research in the Behavioral and Social Science",1994

[2] Mary Shaw, "Writing Good Software Engineering Research papers", IEEE Computer Society, 2003