Preregistration: publishing your plans for a study

The most important distinction is whether decisions were made before or after data collection begins. This is because when researchers are able to look at the data they can be swayed by what they see. Preregistration (or Registration in some fields) is the practice of publishing the plan for a study, including research questions, hypotheses, research design, and data analysis plans before the data has been collected or examined.

A preregistration document is time-stamped and typically registered with an independent party (e.g., an open access repository) so that it can be publicly shared with others. Preregistration provides a transparent documentation of what was planned at a certain time and allows third parties to assess what changes may have occurred afterwards. Importantly, it’s fine for changes to occur, it’s just important to know when and what these were, and why these changes were made.

Having a more detailed preregistration leaves fewer research degrees of freedom. In other words, the more detailed a preregistration is, the better third parties can assess any possible changes and how they may affect confidence in the results.

One platform for preregistering research is the Open Science Framework (OSF). On the OSF there are support videos and documentation to guide you through the process. You can use a variety of templates depending on your discipline and methodology to preregister your study in varying levels of detail. These templates include:

• Standard OSF template (good for most science disciplines)
• Systematic Reviews
• Social Psychology
• Qualitative
• Secondary Data

  

If none of the available templates suit you, you can write your own document and preregister this in an open-ended preregistration!