High Levels of Reporting of Exploratory Research in Registered Reports and Preregistered Articles

Le résumé fourni par la source

A persistent concern about implementation of preregistration and Registered Reports in psychology is that doing so would reduce the frequency and value of exploratory research. As we are nearly 15 years on from the initial proposal to adopt registration in psychology, it seems time to formally examine whether these concerns have any merit. The purpose of the present preregistered study was to examine the frequency of reports of exploratory research in registered and non-registered articles. We replicated and extended a study by O’Mahony (2023) by examining a matched set of Registered Reports, preregistered articles, and traditional articles (total N = 300) from 30 psychology journals for the frequency of reported exploratory research, defined as any analysis that is indicated to be exploratory in nature or that is indicated to not be a planned test of a specific hypothesis. Across three different indicators, the results strongly supported the hypotheses that Registered Reports and preregistered articles would include more exploratory research than traditional articles. There was only weak evidence for the hypothesis that Registered Reports would contain greater reporting of exploratory research than preregistered articles. Exploratory analyses examined variations by journal, journal policies, and change over time, but found little of note. The results from this study establish an empirical basis to be used in future discussions about the impact of registration on the reporting of exploratory research.

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.