Evidence Briefings: Towards a Medium to Transfer Knowledge from Systematic Reviews to Practitioners

Abstract

Context: Integrate research evidence with practice is one of the main goals of evidence-based software engineering. However, recent studies show that the connection between systematic reviews and practitioners has not fully established. Goal: This paper presents the first steps towards a medium to transfer knowledge acquired from systematic reviews to practitioners. Method: We selected a set of systematic reviews identified by a tertiary study and extracted their findings to generate one-page Evidence Briefings to serve as mediums. A design specialist defined the briefings structure based on information design and gestalt principles. To evaluate the format and content of the briefings we conducted personal opinion surveys based on two groups: StackExchange users that posted questions in topics related to the reviews, and the authors of the selected reviews themselves. The former had a response rate of 21.9% (32 out 146) and the latter 31.8% (7 out of 22). Results: Practitioners rarely use systematic review research papers as mediums to acquire knowledge, since just 9% have told to do so. Both researchers and practitioners positively evaluated the evidence briefings, since 71% and 82% of the StackExchange users and systematic review authors, respectively, agreed or strongly agreed that the briefings' interface is clear. Conclusions: Researchers and practitioners were positive about the content and format of the evidence briefings we proposed. It is also possible to say that there is a gap between practitioners and systematic reviews due to the low percentage of practitioners that consume systematic reviews. The good reception of the evidence briefings from both sides show a possible route to reduce that gap.