Context: The need for empirical investigations in software engineering domain is growing immensely. Many researchers nowadays, conduct and validate their study using empirical evidences. Survey is one such empirical investigation method which enables researchers to collect data from the large population. Main aim of the survey is to generalize the findings. Many problems are faced by the researchers in the survey process. Survey outcomes also depend upon variables like sample size, response rate and analysis techniques. Hence there is need for the literature addressing all the possible problems faced and also the impact of survey variables on outcomes.

Objectives: Firstly, to identify the common problems faced by the researchers from the existing literature and also analyze the impact of the survey variables. Secondly to collect the experiences of software engineering researchers regarding the problems faced and the survey variables. Finally come up with a checklist of all the problems and mitigation strategies along with the information about the impact of survey variables.

Methods: Initially a systematic literature review was conducted, to identify the existing problems in the literature and to know the effect of response rate, sample size, analysis techniques on survey outcomes. Then systematic literature review results were validated by conducting semi-structured, faceto-face interviews with software engineering researchers.

Results: We were successful in providing a checklist of problems along with their mitigation strategies. The survey variables dependency on type of research, researcher’s choices limited us from further analyzing their impact on survey outcomes. The face-to-face interviews with software engineering researchers provided validations to our research results.

Conclusions: This research gave us deeper insights into the survey methodology. It helped us to explore the differences that exists between the state of art and state of practice towards problem mitigation in survey process.