The relevance of context is particularly stressed in case studies, where it is said that “case study is an empirical method aimed at investigating contemporary phenomena in their context”. In this research, we classify context information and provide a context checklist for industrial software engineering. The checklist serves the purpose of (a) supporting researchers and practitioners in characterizing the context in which they are working; (b) supporting researchers with a checklist to identify relevant contextual information to elicit and report during primary and secondary studies. We utilized a systematic approach for constructing the classification of context information and provided a detailed definition for each item. We collected feedback from researchers as well as practitioners. The usefulness of the checklist was perceived more positively by researchers than practitioners, though they highlighted benefits (raising awareness of the importance of context and usefulness for management). The understandability was perceived positively by both practitioners and researchers. The checklist may serve as a “meta-model”, forming the basis for specific adaptations for different research areas, and as input for researchers deciding which context information to extract in systematic reviews. The checklist may also help researchers in reporting context in research papers.

在案例研究中特别强调了上下文的相关性，据说“案例研究是一种旨在研究其上下文中的当代现象的经验方法”。在这项研究中，我们对上下文信息进行分类，并为工业软件工程提供了上下文清单。该清单的目的是：（a）支持研究人员和从业人员表征他们的工作背景；（b）为研究人员提供清单，以识别相关的背景信息，以便在初等和中等研究中得出和报告。我们利用一种系统的方法来构建上下文信息的分类，并为每个项目提供了详细的定义。我们收集了研究人员和从业人员的反馈。尽管研究人员强调检查表的好处（提高了对上下文重要性的认识以及对管理的有用性），但与从业人员相比，检查表的有用性得到了更积极的评价。从业人员和研究人员都对可理解性给予了积极的评价。该清单可以充当“元模型”，形成针对不同研究领域的特定改编的基础，并作为研究人员的输入，以决定在系统评价中提取哪些上下文信息。该清单还可以帮助研究人员在研究论文中报告背景。