Will Knowledge about More Efficient Study Designs Increase the Willingness to Pre-Register?

Pre-registration is a straightforward way to make science more transparent, and control Type 1 error rates. Pre-registration is often presented as beneficial for science in general, but rarely as a practice that leads to immediate individual benefits for researchers. One benefit of pre-registered studies is that they allow for non-conventional research designs that are more efficient than conventional designs. For example, by performing one-tailed tests and sequential analyses researchers can perform well-powered studies much more efficiently. In this project, Daniel Lakens examined whether such non-conventional but more efficient designs are considered appropriate by editors under the pre-condition that the analysis plans are pre-registered, and if so, whether researchers are more willing to pre-register their analysis plan to take advantage of the efficiency benefits of non-conventional designs.

Publications associated with this project: