Estimating the prevalence of transparency and reproducibility-related research practices in psychology (2014-2017)

Psychologists are navigating an unprecedented period of introspection about the credibility and utility of their discipline. Reform initiatives have emphasized the benefits of several transparency and reproducibility-related research practices; however, their adoption across the psychology literature is unknown. To estimate their prevalence, we manually examined a random sample of 250 psychology articles published between 2014-2017. Over half of the articles were publicly available (154/237, 65% [95% confidence interval, 59%-71%]); however, sharing of research materials (26/183, 14% [10%-19%]), study protocols (0/188, 0% [0%-1%]), raw data (4/188, 2% [1%-4%]), and analysis scripts (1/188, 1% [0%-1%]) was rare. Pre-registration was also uncommon (5/188, 3% [1%-5%]). Many articles included a funding disclosure statement (142/228, 62% [56%-69%]), but conflict of interest statements were less common (88/228, 39% [32%-45%]). Replication studies were rare (10/188, 5% [3%-8%]) and few studies were included in systematic reviews (21/183, 11% [8%-16%]) or meta-analyses (12/183, 7% [4%-10%]). Overall, the results suggest that transparency and reproducibility-related research practices were far from routine. These findings establish a baseline which can be used to assess future progress towards increasing the credibility and utility of psychology research.