Metrics and statistical techniques used to evaluate internal quality of object-oriented software: A systematic mapping

Efficient ways to measure and evaluate internal quality of object-oriented (OO) software are widely discussed in the literature. Studies in software engineering has used statistical techniques/models to evaluate quality in different aspects (quality characteristics and sub characteristics) and using different variables (traditional and object-oriented software metrics) to quantify it. This paper presents results of applying a systematic mapping to identify the most software metrics cited and the most statistical techniques/models used to evaluate quality in OO software. As a result, we highlighted 79 papers related to the research question in a total of 8,231 papers published in scientific journals. The main contributions of this work are (i) a list of the most used metrics and measurable properties, (ii) a list of the most used statistical techniques/models, and (ii) the main references, themes to be explored and recommendations for future research.