Empirical Comparison of Model Consistency Between Ontology-Driven Conceptual Modeling and Traditional Conceptual Modeling

This paper conducts an empirical study that explores the differences between adopting a traditional conceptual modeling (TCM) technique and an ontology-driven conceptual modeling (ODCM) technique with the objective to understand how these techniques influence the consistency between the resulting conceptual models. To determine these differences, we first briefly discuss previous research efforts and compose our hypothesis. Next, this hypothesis is tested in a rigorously developed experiment, where a total of 100 students from two different Universities participated. The findings of our empirical study confirm that there do exist meaningful differences between adopting the two techniques. We observed that novice modelers applying the ODCM technique arrived at higher consistent models compared to novice modelers applying the TCM technique. More specifically, our results indicate that the adoption of an ontological way of thinking facilitates modelers in constructing higher consistent models.