Preregistration

A preregistration is not part of your main article.

Instead, a preregistration is a separate document that you create before running your study. Your preregistration publicly declares your study's purpose, design, hypotheses, and analyses in advance. The reason that scientists preregister studies is to keep themselves honest.

There are many ways to preregister a study. The most basic form is an open-ended preregistration. With an open-ended preregistration, you upload a document (e.g., a Microsoft Word .docx file) to a website such as Open Science Framework.

Your preregistration can include many elements. But at the very least, it should include the following information:

Purpose

What is your study's purpose?

Participants

How many participants will you recruit? How will you recruit participants? Will you discard data for any reason?

Measures

What variables will you measure? Include a comprehensive list.

Procedure

If your study is an experiment, describe its procedure in basic detail. Which variables will you manipulate? How many experimental groups will there be?

If your study is a longitudinal study, describe the time frame and which measures will be collected during which waves.

Hypotheses, Analyses, & Expected Results

What statistical methods will you use? What comparisons are you interested in? Generally, how will you analyze your data? What control variables, if any, will you include in your models? And what results do you expect?

Cite Your Preregistration in Your Article

If you preregistered your study, be sure to let readers know in your main article, e.g.:

Method

Preregistration

This study's desired sample size, included variables, hypotheses, and planned analyses were preregistered on Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/hnfn4/) prior to any data being collected. Analysis scripts and an abridged dataset containing all primary study variables can also be found on OSF.

Participants

We collected data from a total of 2,000 participants. Participants were recruited via the psychology subject pool at....

Helpful hint: Avoid putting your name or other identifying information (e.g., which University you're affiliated with) in your preregistration document. During the peer review process, reviewers will oftentimes want to see your preregistration. However, the peer review process is oftentimes blind (i.e., reviewers should not know who you are). Omitting your name from the preregistration document will allow you to share it with reviewers anonymously through Open Science Framework.

PERUNA'S POPULARITY

Preregistration: How Popular is Peruna?

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to estimate SMU students' love for Peruna and to examine whether older or younger students love Peruna more.

Participants

We plan to recruit 2,000 SMU students through the psychology subject pool. We will run this study for only one semester. Thus, the total number of participants may be more or less than 2,000, depending on participant availability. We will not exclude any data for any reason.

Measures

We will measure (1) participants' age via numeric free responses, and (2) their love for Peruna using a new 5-item scale that we have developed.

Analyses and Expected Results

We will report the mean level of love for Peruna. We will also report the correlation between age and love for Peruna. We expect that younger students will love Peruna more than do older students.