  [Context] In software engineering research, emphasis is given to sound
evaluations of new approaches. While industry surveys or industrial case
studies are preferred to evaluate industrial applicability, controlled
experiments with student participants are commonly used to determine
measurements such as effectiveness and efficiency of a proposed approach.
[Objectives] In this paper, we elaborate on the current state of the art of
controlled experiments using student participants. As student participants are
commonly only reluctantly accepted in scientific communities and threats
regarding the generalizability are quite obvious, we want to determine how
widespread controlled experiments with student participants are and in which
settings they are used. [Methods] This paper reports on a systematic mapping
study using high-quality journals and conferences from the software engineering
field as data sources. We scanned all papers published between 2010 and 2014
and investigated all papers reporting student experiments in detail. [Results]
From 2788 papers under investigation 175 report results from controlled
experiments. 109 (62.29%) of these controlled experiments have been conducted
with student participants. Most experiments used undergraduate student
participants, recruited students on a voluntary basis, and set them tasks to
measure their comprehension. However, many experiments lack information
regarding the students' recruitment and other important factors. [Conclusions]
In conclusion, student participation in software engineering experiments can be
seen as a common evaluation approach. In contrast, there seems to be little
knowledge about the threats to validity in student experiments, as major
drivers such as the recruitment are not reported at all.
