Waveforms of $CO_2$ gas shielded arc welding in short circuit transfer mode was studied with the waveform analysis program, which can calculate various waveform factors such as number of short circuit event, mean and standard deviation of short circuit time and arc time. The calculated values of these factors were correlated independently or in combination with the spatter generation rate to figure out the most reliable index for evaluating spatter generation and further for arc stability. As a result this study, it was confirmed that the spatter generation tends to decrease with the increase of short circuit frequency. Further to this, it was also found that as the short circuit frequency increases the short circuit event becomes more uniform resulting in the decrease of standard deviations ($sigma$values) of short circuit time and arc time. This result demonstrated that these factors are strongly correlated with each other and thus any one of these factors can be used for the evaluation index. In the discussion, however, short circuit frequency was proposed for the most practical index in evaluating the arc stability of short circuit transfer mode since it is the one which could be monitored in-process condition without any complex caculation process.