SafeLLM4SE: Statistical Evaluation and Reporting for LLM-based Software Engineering Systems

Abstract

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used for software engineering tasks, yet their stochastic behavior challenges the validity, reproducibility, and comparability of their evaluations. Conventional practices such as reporting a single output, an average score, best-of-N, or pass@k performance can obscure variability and estimation uncertainty, potentially leading to misleading conclusions about system reliability. This article presents SafeLLM4SE, a practical methodology and reporting standard for statistically principled evaluation of LLM-based software engineering systems. Rather than treating generated outputs as deterministic artifacts, SafeLLM4SE treats them as realizations of a stochastic process and distinguishes quality, stability, and estimation uncertainty. It combines adaptive sampling with confidence intervals, distribution-aware statistical comparisons, effect sizes, and a minimum reporting standard covering model configuration, reproducibility, evaluation procedures, and resource usage. SafeLLM4SE is also provided as an open-source software package available on PyPI, enabling researchers and practitioners to reproduce and extend the methodology. We illustrate its application by comparing two LLMs on HumanEval, a benchmark of programming problems assessed through functional tests.