It's interesting, though, that the author makes it seem like this paper is the only research on the efficacy of TDD. Even a cursory search of Google Scholar turns up a number of papers:
I haven't read the dissertation, but the abstract seems to contradict the OP:
"This research demonstrates that software developers applying a test-first (TDD) approach are likely to improve some software quality aspects at minimal cost over a comparable test-last approach. In particular this research has shown statistically significant differences in the areas of code complexity, size, and testing. These internal
quality differences can substantially improve external software quality (defects), software maintainability, software understandability, and software reusability. Further this research has shown that mature programmers who have used both the test-first and test-last development approaches prefer the test-first approach."
It's interesting, though, that the author makes it seem like this paper is the only research on the efficacy of TDD. Even a cursory search of Google Scholar turns up a number of papers:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=%22tes...
Including a 354-page doctoral dissertation that studied both students and professionals over a 5-year period [PDF]:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.94....
I haven't read the dissertation, but the abstract seems to contradict the OP: "This research demonstrates that software developers applying a test-first (TDD) approach are likely to improve some software quality aspects at minimal cost over a comparable test-last approach. In particular this research has shown statistically significant differences in the areas of code complexity, size, and testing. These internal quality differences can substantially improve external software quality (defects), software maintainability, software understandability, and software reusability. Further this research has shown that mature programmers who have used both the test-first and test-last development approaches prefer the test-first approach."