research-article

The impact of prior knowledge on searching in software documentation

Authors:

Klaas Andries de Graaf,

Hans van VlietAuthors Info & Claims

DocEng '14: Proceedings of the 2014 ACM symposium on Document engineering

Pages 189 - 198

https://doi.org/10.1145/2644866.2644878

Published: 16 September 2014 Publication History

Abstract

Software documents are used to capture and communicate knowledge in software projects. It is important that this knowledge can be retrieved efficiently and effectively, to prevent wasted time and errors that negatively affect the quality of software. In this paper we investigate how software professionals search for knowledge in documentation. We studied the search behaviour of professionals in industry. Prior knowledge helps professionals to search software documents efficiently and effectively. However, it can also misguide professionals to an incomplete search.

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Cited By

Jahin A(2023)Investigating the Relation between Requirements Framing and Confirmation Bias in TestingProceedings of the 27th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering10.1145/3593434.3593447(298-303)Online publication date: 14-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3593434.3593447
Salman IRodriguez PTurhan BTosun AGureller A(2022)What Leads to a Confirmatory or Disconfirmatory Behavior of Software Testers?IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2020.301989248:4(1351-1368)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2020.3019892
Spadini DÇalikli GBacchelli ARothermel GBae D(2020)Primers or reminders?Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering10.1145/3377811.3380385(1171-1182)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3377811.3380385
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

The impact of prior knowledge on searching in software documentation
1. Information systems
  1. Information retrieval
    1. Information retrieval query processing
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software post-development issues
      1. Documentation

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cover image ACM Conferences

DocEng '14: Proceedings of the 2014 ACM symposium on Document engineering

September 2014

226 pages

ISBN:9781450329491

DOI:10.1145/2644866

General Chair:
Steven Simske
Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, USA
,
Program Chair:
Sebastian Rönnau
Zalando AG, Berlin, Germany

Copyright © 2014 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGWEB: ACM Special Interest Group on Hypertext, Hypermedia, and Web

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 16 September 2014

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National Natural Science Foundation of China
Regeling Kenniswerkers

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DocEng '14

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SIGWEB

DocEng '14: ACM Symposium on Document Engineering 2014

September 16 - 19, 2014

Colorado, Fort Collins, USA

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DocEng '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 15 of 41 submissions, 37%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 194 of 564 submissions, 34%

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Cited By

Jahin A(2023)Investigating the Relation between Requirements Framing and Confirmation Bias in TestingProceedings of the 27th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering10.1145/3593434.3593447(298-303)Online publication date: 14-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3593434.3593447
Salman IRodriguez PTurhan BTosun AGureller A(2022)What Leads to a Confirmatory or Disconfirmatory Behavior of Software Testers?IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2020.301989248:4(1351-1368)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2020.3019892
Spadini DÇalikli GBacchelli ARothermel GBae D(2020)Primers or reminders?Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering10.1145/3377811.3380385(1171-1182)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3377811.3380385
Marques ABradley NMurphy G(2020)Characterizing Task-Relevant Information in Natural Language Software Artifacts2020 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)10.1109/ICSME46990.2020.00052(476-487)Online publication date: Sep-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME46990.2020.00052
Marques ADumas MPfahl DApel SRusso A(2019)Helping developers search and locate task-relevant information in natural language documentsProceedings of the 2019 27th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3338906.3341459(1168-1171)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3338906.3341459
Ben Charrada EMussato SSablatnig RHassan T(2016)An Exploratory Study on Managing and Searching for Documents in Software Engineering EnvironmentsProceedings of the 2016 ACM Symposium on Document Engineering10.1145/2960811.2967149(189-192)Online publication date: 13-Sep-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2960811.2967149
Jørgensen MPapatheocharous E(2015)Believing is SeeingProceedings of the 2015 41st Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications10.1109/SEAA.2015.56(92-95)Online publication date: 26-Aug-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/SEAA.2015.56

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