The potential of preregistration in psychology: Assessing preregistration producibility and preregistration-study consistency

Abstract

Study preregistration has become increasingly popular in psychology, but its potential to restrict researcher degrees of freedom has not yet been empirically verified. We used an extensive protocol to assess the producibility (i.e., the degree to which a study can be properly conducted based on the available information) of preregistrations and the consistency between preregistrations and their corresponding papers for 300 psychology studies. We found that preregistrations often lack methodological details and that undisclosed deviations from preregistered plans are frequent. These results highlight that biases due to researcher degrees of freedom remain possible in many preregistered studies. More comprehensive registration templates typically yielded more producible preregistrations. We did not find that the producibility and consistency of preregistrations differed over time or between original and replication studies. Furthermore, we found that operationalizations of variables were generally preregistered more producible and consistently than other study parts. Inconsistencies between preregistrations and published studies were mainly encountered for data collection procedures, statistical models, and exclusion criteria. Our results indicate that, to unlock the full potential of preregistration, researchers in psychology should aim to write more producible preregistrations, adhere to these preregistrations more faithfully, and more transparently report any deviations from their preregistrations. This could be facilitated by training and education to improve preregistration skills, as well as the development of more comprehensive templates.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/met0000687
Divisions: Aston University (General)
Additional Information: Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0).
Uncontrolled Keywords: preregistration,open science,meta-research,preregistration deviationreregistration template,preregistration template,preregistration producibility,preregistration-study consistency,SDG 4 - Quality Education,SDG 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth
Publication ISSN: 1082-989X
Last Modified: 05 Dec 2024 08:23
Date Deposited: 17 Jun 2024 17:00
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: https://psycnet ... -33919-001.html (Publisher URL)
http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2024-10-10
Published Online Date: 2024-10-10
Accepted Date: 2024-05-22
Authors: van den Akker, Olmo
Bakker, Marjan
van Assen, Marcel A. L. M.
Pennington, Charlotte Rebecca (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-5259-642X)
Verweij, Leone
Elsherif, Mahmoud M.
Claesen, Aline
Gaillard, Stefan D. M.
Yeung, Siu Kit
Frankenberger, Jan-Luca
Krautter, Kai
Cockcroft, Jamie P.
Kreuer, Katharina S.
Evans, Thomas Rhys
Heppel, Frédérique M.
Schoch, Sarah F.
Korbmacher, Max
Yamada, Yuki
Albayrak-Aydemir, Nihan
Alzahawi, Shilaan
Sarafoglou, Alexandra
Sitnikov, Maksim M.
Děchtěrenko, Filip
Wingen, Sophia
Grinschgl, Sandra
Hartmann, Helena
Stewart, Suzanne L. K.
de Oliveira, Cátia M. F.
Ashcroft-Jones, Sarah
Baker, Bradley J.
Wicherts, Jelte M.

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