An empirical study to validate the use of ontological guidelines in the creation of i^∗ models

I^∗ is a well known goal modeling framework, developed by a large and geographically dispersed research community. Currently, i∗ users tend to ascribe different and conflicting meanings to its constructs, leading to a nonuniform use of the language, and consequently undermining its adoption. In previous works, we proposed ontological guidelines to support the creation of i^∗ models, in an attempt to provide a solution to this problem. In this paper, we present an empirical study, to evaluate these ontological guidelines. Results show that for more experienced conceptual modelers, the ontological guidelines indeed support i^∗ modeling. However, results are not as positive for non-experienced conceptual modelers.