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Comments on "The Confounding Effect of Class Size on the Validity of Object-Oriented Metrics"
July 2003 (vol. 29 no. 7)
pp. 670-672
Abstract—It has been proposed that size should be taken into account as a confounding variable when validating object-oriented metrics. We take issue with this perspective since the ability to measure size does not temporally precede the ability to measure many of the object-oriented metrics that have been proposed. Hence, the condition that a confounding variable must occur causally prior to another explanatory variable is not met. In addition, when specifying multivariate models of defects that incorporate object-oriented metrics, entering size as an explanatory variable may result in misspecifed models that lack internal consistency. Examples are given where this misspecification occurs.
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Index Terms:
Object-oriented metrics, software defects, defect-proneness, statistical modeling.
Citation:
William M. Evanco, "Comments on "The Confounding Effect of Class Size on the Validity of Object-Oriented Metrics"," IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol. 29, no. 7, pp. 670-672, July 2003, doi:10.1109/TSE.2003.1214331
