TY  - JOUR
AU  - Stein, Cara 
AU  - Cox, Glenn 
AU  - Etzkorn, Letha 
PY  - 2005
TI  - Exploring the Relationship between Cohesion and Complexity
JF  - Journal of Computer Science
VL  - 1
IS  - 2
DO  - 10.3844/jcssp.2005.137.144
UR  - https://thescipub.com/abstract/jcssp.2005.137.144
AB  - Many metrics have been proposed to measure the complexity or cohesion of object-oriented
software. However, the complexity or cohesion of a piece of software is more difficult to capture than
these metrics imply. In fact, studies have shown that existing metrics consistently fail to capture
complexity or cohesion well. This study explores the reasons behind these results: cohesion is difficult
to capture from syntactic elements of code, complexity is too multi-faceted to be captured by one
metric and the qualities of complexity and cohesion are not independent. These factors have resulted in
metrics that are purported to measure complexity or cohesion but are inadequate or misclassified. This
study shows that there is overlap between some of the complexity and cohesion metrics and points to a
more basic relationship between complexity and cohesion: that a lack of cohesion may be associated
with high complexity.