A template for preregistration of quantitative research in psychology: Report of the joint psychological societies preregistration task force.

Michael Bosnjak,Daryl B O'Connor,David Mellor,Stefanie Mueller,Christian J Fiebach,Rosemarie I Sokol,Frederick L Oswald

doi:10.1037/amp0000879

Abstract

Recent years have seen dramatic changes in research practices in psychological science. In particular, preregistration of study plans before conducting a study has been identified as an important tool to help increase the transparency of science and to improve the robustness of psychological research findings. This article presents the Psychological Research Preregistration-Quantitative (PRP-QUANT) Template produced by a Joint Psychological Societies Preregistration Task Force consisting of the American Psychological Association (APA), the British Psychological Society (BPS), and the German Psychological Society (DGPs), supported by the Center for Open Science (COS) and the Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID). The goal of the Task Force was to provide the psychological community with a consensus template for the preregistration of quantitative research in psychology, one with wide coverage and the ability, if necessary, to adapt to specific journals, disciplines, and researcher needs. This article covers the structure and use of the PRP-QUANT template, while outlining and discussing the benefits of its use for researchers, authors, funders, and other relevant stakeholders. We hope that by introducing this template and by demonstrating the support of preregistration by major academic psychological societies, we will facilitate an increase in preregistration practices and also the further advancement of transparency and knowledge-sharing in the psychological sciences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Highlights

This article presents the Psychological Research Preregistration-Quantitative (PRP-QUANT) Template produced by a Joint Psychological Societies Preregistration Task Force consisting of the American Psychological Association (APA), British Psychological Society (BPS) and German Psychological Society (DGPs), supported by the Center for Open Science (COS) and the Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID)
Several advantages of adopting the PRP-QUANT Template for these matters appear obvious and have been discussed in more depth above, including the integration of key ingredients from a broad range of existing preregistration templates its similarity in structure to the APA Style Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS; Appelbaum et al, 2018)
In the current article, we have outlined the work of the Joint Psychological Societies Task Force on Preregistration, provided guidance on how to work with the PRP-QUANT template, described and discussed its structure, and outlined the potential benefits for researchers, authors, funders and other relevant stakeholders of using this template

Summary

Introduction

Developing a detailed analytical plan, connected to specific hypotheses in the preregistration, can inform the design of the research, the data collection needs of the study, as well as refine the subsequent analysis of the existing dataset. If differences between study plan and final report are made transparent, reviewers should by default acknowledge this openness by the authors; only if the reviewer has well-substantiated reasons to believe that the deviation from the original study plan reflects questionable research practices (like in the case of post-hoc changing the main outcome variables), such discrepancies could be a reason for criticism or rejection of a manuscript.

Results

Conclusion