Preregistration

The preregistration revolution needs to distinguish between predictions and analyses

Nosek et al. (1) recently joined others in advocating for “widespread adoption of preregistration” as a tool for advancing science. The language they use in making this important argument, however, creates unnecessary confusion: Like many others …

The value of preregistration for psychological science: A conceptual analysis

For over two centuries researchers have been criticized for using research practices that makes it easier to present data in line with what they wish to be true. With the rise of the internet it has become easier to preregister the theoretical and …

Tie my hands loosely: Pre-analysis plans in political science

In this short article, I want to provide some of my thoughts on these developments from the perspective of someone who writes PAPs and reads them as a reviewer, as well as from the perspective of a journal editor.

Trial registration 10 years on

This month marks the tenth anniversary of the landmark decision by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors to make journals require “registration of any clinical trials in a public trials registry at or before the time of first patient …

Ulysses' pact or Ulysses' raft: Using pre-analysis plans in experimental and nonexperimental research

Economists have recently adopted pre-analysis plans in response to concerns about robustness and transparency in research. The increased use of registered pre-analysis plans has raised competing concerns that detailed plans are costly to create, …

Update on Trial Registration 11 Years after the ICMJE Policy Was Established

Laws and policies to establish a global trial reporting system have greatly increased the transparency and accountability of the clinical research enterprise. The three components of the trial reporting system are trial registration, reporting of …

Using Pre-Analysis Plans in Qualitative Research

In the last decade, there has been a significant push for greater transparency in the social sciences. For example, epistemological and methodological debates have addressed the scope, meaning, and appropriateness of research transparency, and …

What should a preregistration contain?

A large amount of variation exists in beliefs about the purpose and benefits of preregistration, making it difficult to implement and evaluate, and limiting its usefulness. Additionally, no single resource exists to describe what a preregistration …

Why and How to Use Pre-Analysis Plans

We describe what is a pre-analysis plan (PAP) and why you should use one. We emphasize the potential political uses of PAPs and, in particular, how the PAP is in this respect a uniquely powerful tool for increasing the likelihood that evidence …

Why Preregistration Makes Me Nervous

I must admit that when I first heard of the effort to get psychological scientists to preregister their studies (that is, to submit to a journal a study’s hypotheses and a plan for how the data will be analyzed before that study has been run), I had …