108 Empirical Research in Software Engineering
5. Manageable: The RQ should be answerable, that is, it should be feasible to answer.
6. Practical use: What is the practical application of answering the RQ? The RQ must
be of practical importance to the software industry and researchers.
7. Related to literature: The RQ should relate to the existing literature. It should ll
gaps in the existing literature.
8. Ethically neutral: The RQ should be ethically neutral. The problem statement
should not contain the words “should” or “ought”. Consider the following example:
Should the techniques, peer reviews, and walkthroughs be used for verication in
contrast to using inspection?
The above statement is said to be not ethically neutral, as i ...