Preregistration on the rise? A survey on psychological researchers’ attitudes, motivations, and obstacles

Preregistration, the documentation and public sharing of a study plan prior to data collection or analysis, is encouraged in psychology (Nosek & Lindsay, 2018; Nosek et al., 2019). Yet, psychologists rarely preregister their studies (Hardwicke et al., 2021). We explored possible reasons for this discrepancy by surveying psychological students and researchers about their attitudes, motivations, and obstacles regarding preregistration. We recruited 289 participants for our online study by scanning authors of articles on Web of Science, PubMed, PSYNDEX, PsychInfo, and of preregistrations on OSF Registries. Based on the theory of planned behavior, we examined whether positive attitudes (moderated by the perceived importance of preregistration), the belief that others approve of preregistration (favorable subjective norm), and the perceived behavioral control predict researchers' intention to preregister in the future. Additionally, we predicted an effect of research experience on attitudes, motivations, and obstacles since early career researchers are often seen as primary advocates of open science. The preregistered hypotheses were tested by computing regression models, including preregistration experience as a control variable. Attitudes, perceived importance, social norm, and perceived behavioral control significantly predicted researchers’ intention to preregister. Fewer years worked in research correlated with more positive attitudes and stronger motivations, while not affecting perceived obstacles. Results indicated that time expenditure, low incentives, and fear of low flexibility currently deter psychologists from preregistering. By addressing these obstacles, preregistration may be encouraged. This Research Talk, which was presented at the 52nd Congress of the German Psychological Society (Hildesheim, Germany), illustrates our quantitative findings and complements them with qualitative data that delve deeper into motivations, obstacles, and requests regarding preregistration.

Conference object relating to: "Spitzer, L. &, Mueller, S. (2023). Registered report: Survey on attitudes and experiences regarding preregistration in psychological research. PLOS ONE 18(3): e0281086. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281086" and "Spitzer, L., & Mueller, S. (2021). Registered Report Protocol: Survey on attitudes and experiences regarding preregistration in psychological research. PLOS ONE 16(7): e0253950. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253950"