Educational Psychology for Policy and Practice

EPPP welcomes three types of manuscripts:

• EdP Policy/Practice Research articles include quantitative, qualitative, and/or mixed methods studies that 1) draw on constructs and/or theories related to the psychology of teaching, learning, motivation, and/or instruction and 2) examine implementation and/or outcomes of educational policies and/or practices or 3) provide evidence to inform policy and/or practice. For example, authors may design a study to understand the varying ways accountability is implemented across schools, districts, and/or states and how these various implementation approaches are related to learning or motivation. Or authors might carry out a study that details how instructional practices are related to students’ outcomes and identities, and provide guidance for policy and practice.
• EdP Policy/Practice Reviews include articles that summarize relevant educational psychology evidence available on specific education policy or practice topic. The purpose of these types of manuscripts is to provide an authoritative account of what we know about particular policy issues/outcomes or particular practices from an applied educational psychology perspective. For example, authors might conduct a comprehensive review that provides an up-to-date synthesis of what is known about the effects of high-stakes testing on student motivation or on teacher practice. Authors might explore the theoretical or actual impact of a specific policy on educational practices (e.g., an exploration of content standards and their role on resultant instructional practices or an analysis of how education gag orders influence teacher practice).
• EdP Policy/Practice Commentaries include essays in which authors discuss strategies and/or ideas for how they have conducted educational psychology policy or practice focused research or outreach/dissemination. For example, authors might discuss how they come up with topics for analysis, or the types of methods they use to deconstruct connections between educational psychology science and educational policy/practice. Commentaries may also include a brief overview of evidence on a particular educational psychology related topic with specific recommendations for policy and/or practice. Or commentaries may focus on particular strategies effective for translating science for or disseminating that science to policymakers/practitioners.

Authors are encouraged to reach out to co-editors for guidance if needed.

Prior to submission, please carefully read and follow the submission guidelines detailed below. Manuscripts that do not conform to the submission guidelines may be returned without review.

Submission

To submit to the editorial office, please submit manuscripts electronically through the Manuscript Submission Portal in Microsoft Word (.docx) or LaTex (.tex) as a zip file with an accompanied Portable Document Format (.pdf) of the manuscript file.

Prepare manuscripts according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association using the 7th edition. Manuscripts may be copyedited for bias-free language (see Chapter 5 of the Publication Manual). APA Style and Grammar Guidelines for the 7th edition are available.

Sharon L. Nichols, PhD, co-editor
University of Texas at San Antonio

Francesa López, PhD, co-editor
The Pennsylvania State University

General correspondence may be directed to the editor’s office.

Manuscript preparation

Prepare manuscripts according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association using the 7th edition. Manuscripts may be copyedited for bias-free language (see Chapter 5 of the Publication Manual). APA Style and Grammar Guidelines for the 7th edition are available.

Double-space your manuscript. Other formatting instructions, as well as instructions on preparing tables, figures, references, metrics, and abstracts, appear in the Publication Manual. Additional guidance on APA Style is available on the APA Style website.

Masked review policy

The journal has adopted a policy of masked review for all submissions, which means that the identities of both authors and reviewers are masked. The cover letter should include all authors' names and institutional affiliations. The first page of text should omit this information but should include the title of the manuscript and the date it is submitted.

Every effort should be made to see that the manuscript itself contains no clues to the authors’ identity, including grant numbers, names of institutions providing IRB approval, self-citations, and links to online repositories for data, materials, code, or preregistrations (e.g., Create a View-only Link for a Project). Authors should never use first person (I, my, we, our) when referring to a study conducted by the author(s) or when doing so reveals the authors’ identities, e.g., “in our previous work, Johnson et al., 1998 reported that…” Instead, references to the authors’ work should be in third person, e.g., “Johnson et al. (1998) reported that….”

Please note that if you include masked references in your manuscript, the editor requests that you identify these references in your cover letter, so that the editors can see which articles are being referenced in your submission.

Include the title of the manuscript along with all authors’ names and institutional affiliations in the cover letter. The first page of the manuscript should omit the authors’ names and affiliations but should include the title of the manuscript and the date it is submitted.

Word limits

Manuscript limits vary by type of submission. Research and Review articles should generally not exceed 10,000 words (approximately 35 double-spaced pages in 12-point Times New Roman font), not including references, tables, figures, and appendixes. Editors may return manuscripts longer than 10,000 words for revision if they think the paper is too long. This will involve asking the authors to shorten the paper and return it as a new submission.

Manuscript submission types

EdP Policy/Practice Research

E3P is interested in publishing papers featuring quantitative, qualitative, and/or mixed methods designs that focus on the application of educational psychology to specific policies and or practices. Manuscripts should include studies that 1) draw on constructs and/or theories related to the psychology of teaching, learning, motivation, and/or instruction and 2) that examine implementation and/or outcomes of educational policies and/or practices or 3) provide evidence to inform policy and/or practice. Articles should not exceed 10,000 words (not including tables, references, and/or appendices).

EdP Policy/Practice Reviews

Include articles that summarize relevant evidence available on specific education policy or practice topic. The purpose of these types of manuscripts are to provide an authoritative account of what we know about particular policy issues/outcomes or particular practices. Articles should not exceed 10,000 words (not including tables, references, and/or appendices).

EdP Policy/Practice Commentaries

Include essays in which authors discuss strategies and/or ideas for how they have conducted educational psychology policy or practice focused research. Articles should not exceed 3,000 words (not including references/tables).

Abstract and keywords

All manuscripts must include an abstract containing a maximum of 250 words typed on a separate page. After the abstract, please supply up to five keywords or brief phrases.

Educational impact and implications statement

Please submit a short statement of 2–3 sentences, entitled “Educational impact and implications statement.” It should be inserted after the abstract on the revised manuscript file and should be written in plain English for the educated public. These statements should summarize the article’s findings and why they are important. To be maximally useful, these statements should provide a bottom-line, take-home message that is accurate and easily understood. In addition, they should be able to be translated into media-appropriate statements for use in press releases and on social media (e.g., Twitter). Please refer to the Guidance for Translational Abstracts and Public Significance Statements page to help you write these statements.

Participants: Description and informed consent

• Include a detailed description of all study participants, including (but not limited to) the following: age, gender, ethnicity, SES, clinical diagnoses, and comorbidities (as appropriate), and any other relevant demographics. Explain how demographic information was collected. Consider referencing APA guidelines and policy statements when writing this section. Per APA Guidelines on Race and Ethnicity (PDF, 577KB) in psychology, authors should take care to operationalize participant characteristics to appropriately account for relevant demographics. That is, individuals should be described in a manner that is specific and respectful; refrain from using language that is prejudicial or general. Such specificity accounts for the variability within groups and appropriately accounts for socio-political nature of many demographic variables. See APA Guidelines for Bias-Free Language for specific recommendations.
• The method section also must include a statement describing how informed consent was obtained from the participants (or their parents/guardians) and indicate that the study was conducted in compliance with an appropriate Internal Review Board.

Transparency and openness

APA endorses the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines by a community working group in conjunction with the Center for Open Science (Nosek et al. 2015). Empirical research (including meta-analyses) submitted to the journal must meet the “disclosure” level for all eight aspects of research planning and reporting. Authors should include a Transparency and Openness (TOP) statement in the method section titled “Transparency and Openness.” that describes briefly how readers may access the resources that support your findings. For example:

We report how we determined our sample size, all data exclusions (if any), all manipulations, and all measures in the study, and the study follows JARS (Applebaum, et al., 2018). All data, analysis code, and research materials are available at [stable link to permanent repository]. Data were analyzed using R, version 4.0.0 (R Core Team, 2020) and the package ggplot, version 3.2.1 (Wickham, 2016). This study’s design and its analysis were not pre-registered.

or

We report how we determined our sample size and the protocols used to collect interview and focus group data. Coding protocols and relevant research materials are available at (link). Data were analyzed using NVivo. This was an exploratory mixed methods study and therefore, the study’s design and its analysis were not pre-registered.

Data, materials, and code

Authors must state whether data and study materials are posted to a trusted repository and, if so, how to access them. Recommended repositories include APA’s repository on the Open Science Framework (OSF), or authors can access a full list of other recommended repositories. Trusted repositories adhere to policies that make data discoverable, accessible, usable, and preserved for the long term. Trusted repositories also assign unique and persistent identifiers.

In a subsection titled “Transparency and Openness” at the end of the Method section, specify whether and where the data and material will be available or include a statement noting that they are not available. For submissions with quantitative or simulation analytic methods, state whether the study analysis code is posted to a trusted repository, and, if so, how to access it.

For example:

• All data have been made publicly available at the [trusted repository name] and can be accessed at [persistent URL or DOI].
• Materials and analysis code for this study are available by emailing the corresponding author.
• Materials and analysis code for this study are not available.
• The code behind this analysis/simulation has been made publicly available at the [trusted repository name] and can be accessed at [persistent URL or DOI].

If these resources are publicly available, your TOP statement should state where and how they may be accessed, preferably with a unique, persistent identifier and any applicable license information.

If these resources are under embargo, or cannot be publicly released for legal, ethical, or other exceptional reasons, your TOP statement should make this clear with a brief explanation. If resources are commercially distributed, this should also be made clear.

If your findings do not rely on any data, code or materials, for example in the case of conceptual or theoretical studies, this should be stated.

We acknowledge that sharing qualitative data can be complicated for ethical, contextual, and logistical reasons, and that qualitative data can take many forms. For guidance for preparing qualitative data for sharing, see Campbell et al., 2023 for an approach to de-identifying qualitative data, and also the University of California—San Francisco Library Qualitative Research Guide. 

Journal Article Reporting Standards

Authors are encouraged to consult the APA Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS) for quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research. Updated in 2018, the standards offer ways to improve transparency in reporting to ensure that readers have the information necessary to evaluate the quality of the research and to facilitate collaboration and replication.

The new JARS:

• recommend the division of hypotheses, analyses, and conclusions into primary, secondary, and exploratory groupings to allow for a full understanding of quantitative analyses presented in a manuscript and to enhance reproducibility;
• offer modules for authors reporting on N-of-1 designs, replications, clinical trials, longitudinal studies, and observational studies, as well as the analytic methods of structural equation modeling and Bayesian analysis; and
• include guidelines on reporting on registration (including making protocols public); participant characteristics, including demographic characteristics; inclusion and exclusion criteria; psychometric characteristics of outcome measures and other variables; and planned data diagnostics and analytic strategy.

The journal also encourages the use of the 21-word statement, reporting (1) how the sample size was determined, (2) all data exclusions, (3) all manipulations, and (4) all study measures. See Simmons, Nelson, & Simonsohn (2012) for details; include the following statement in the method section:

• We report how we determined our sample size, all data exclusions (if any), all manipulations, and all measures in the study.

References

List references in alphabetical order. Each listed reference should be cited in text, and each text citation should be listed in the references section.

Examples of basic reference formats:

Journal article

McCauley, S. M., & Christiansen, M. H. (2019). Language learning as language use: A cross-linguistic model of child language development. Psychological Review, 126(1), 1–51. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000126

Authored book

Brown, L. S. (2018). Feminist therapy (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000092-000

Chapter in an edited book

Balsam, K. F., Martell, C. R., Jones. K. P., & Safren, S. A. (2019). Affirmative cognitive behavior therapy with sexual and gender minority people. In G. Y. Iwamasa & P. A. Hays (Eds.), Culturally responsive cognitive behavior therapy: Practice and supervision (2nd ed., pp. 287–314). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000119-012

Data set citation

Alegria, M., Jackson, J. S., Kessler, R. C., & Takeuchi, D. (2016). Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys (CPES), 2001–2003 [Data set]. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR20240.v8

Software/code citation

Viechtbauer, W. (2010). Conducting meta-analyses in R with the meta for package. Journal of Statistical Software, 36(3), 1–48. https://www.jstatsoft.org/v36/i03/

Wickham, H. et al., (2019). Welcome to the tidyverse. Journal of Open Source Software, 4(43), 1686, https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.01686

All data, program code, and other methods must be cited in the text and listed in the references section.

Tables

Use Word’s Insert Table function when you create tables. Using spaces or tabs in your table will create problems when the table is typeset and may result in errors.

Figures

Preferred formats for graphics files are TIFF and JPG, and preferred format for vector-based files is EPS. Graphics downloaded or saved from web pages are not acceptable for publication. Multipanel figures (i.e., figures with parts labeled a, b, c, d, etc.) should be assembled into one file. When possible, please place symbol legends below the figure instead of to the side.

Resolution

• All color line art and halftones: 300 DPI
• Black and white line tone and gray halftone images: 600 DPI

Line weights

• Adobe Photoshop images

1. Color (RGB, CMYK) images: 2 pixels

2. Grayscale images: 4 pixels

• Adobe Illustrator Images

1. Stroke weight: 0.5 points

APA offers authors the option to publish their figures online in color without the costs associated with print publication of color figures.

The same caption will appear on both the online (color) and print (black and white) versions. To ensure that the figure can be understood in both formats, authors should add alternative wording (e.g., “the red (dark gray) bars represent”) as needed.

For authors who prefer their figures to be published in color both in print and online, original color figures can be printed in color at the editor’s and publisher’s discretion provided the author agrees to pay:

• $900 for one figure
• An additional $600 for the second figure
• An additional $450 for each subsequent figure

Display equations

We strongly encourage you to use MathType (third-party software) or Equation Editor 3.0 (built into pre-2007 versions of Word) to construct your equations, rather than the equation support that is built into Word 2007 and Word 2010. Equations composed with the built-in Word 2007/Word 2010 equation support are converted to low-resolution graphics when they enter the production process and must be rekeyed by the typesetter, which may introduce errors.

To construct your equations with MathType or Equation Editor 3.0:

• Go to the Text section of the Insert tab and select Object.
• Select MathType or Equation Editor 3.0 in the drop-down menu.

  If you have an equation that has already been produced using Microsoft Word 2007 or 2010 and you have access to the full version of MathType 6.5 or later, you can convert this equation to MathType by clicking on MathType Insert Equation. Copy the equation from Microsoft Word and paste it into the MathType box. Verify that your equation is correct, click File, and then click Update. Your equation has now been inserted into your Word file as a MathType Equation.

Computer code

Because altering computer code in any way (e.g., indents, line spacing, line breaks, page breaks) during the typesetting process could alter its meaning, we treat computer code differently from the rest of your article in our production process. To that end, we request separate files for computer code.

In online supplemental materials

We request that runnable source code be included as supplemental material to the article. For more information, visit Supplementing Your Article With Online Material.

In the text of the article

If you would like to include code in the text of your published manuscript, please submit a separate file with your code exactly as you want it to appear, using Courier New font with a type size of 8 points. We will make an image of each segment of code in your article that exceeds 40 characters in length. (Shorter snippets of code that appear in text will be typeset in Courier New and run in with the rest of the text.) If an appendix contains a mix of code and explanatory text, please submit a file that contains the entire appendix, with the code keyed in 8-point Courier New.

Submitting supplemental materials

APA can place supplemental materials online, available via the published article in the APA PsycArticles^® database. Please see Supplementing Your Article With Online Material for more details.

Permissions

Authors of accepted papers must obtain and provide to the editor on final acceptance all necessary permissions to reproduce in print and electronic form any copyrighted work, including test materials (or portions thereof), photographs, and other graphic images (including those used as stimuli in experiments).

On advice of counsel, APA may decline to publish any image whose copyright status is unknown.

• Download Permissions Alert Form (PDF, 13KB)

Academic writing and English language editing services

Authors who feel that their manuscript may benefit from additional academic writing or language editing support prior to submission are encouraged to seek out such services at their host institutions, engage with colleagues and subject matter experts, and/or consider several vendors that offer discounts to APA authors. Please note that APA does not endorse or take responsibility for the service providers listed. It is strictly a referral service. Use of such service is not mandatory for publication in an APA journal. Use of one or more of these services does not guarantee selection for peer review, manuscript acceptance, or preference for publication in any APA journal.

Publication policies

For full details on publication policies, including use of Artificial Intelligence tools, please see APA Publishing Policies.

APA policy prohibits an author from submitting the same manuscript for concurrent consideration by two or more publications.

See also APA Journals^® Internet Posting Guidelines.

APA requires authors to reveal any possible conflict of interest in the conduct and reporting of research (e.g., financial interests in a test or procedure, funding by pharmaceutical companies for drug research).

• Download Full Disclosure of Interests Form (PDF, 41KB)

In light of changing patterns of scientific knowledge dissemination, APA requires authors to provide information on prior dissemination of the data and narrative interpretations of the data/research appearing in the manuscript (e.g., if some or all were presented at a conference or meeting, posted on a listserv, shared on a website, including academic social networks like ResearchGate, etc.). This information (2–4 sentences) must be provided as part of the Author Note.

Ethical Principles

It is a violation of APA Ethical Principles to publish “as original data, data that have been previously published” (Standard 8.13).

On occasion it may be appropriate to publish several reports referring to the same database. The author should inform the editor at the time of submission about all previously published or submitted reports and their relation to the current submission, so the editor can judge if the article represents a new contribution. Readers also should be informed; the text of an article should cite other reports that used the same sample (or a subsample) or the same data and methods.

In addition, APA Ethical Principles specify that “after research results are published, psychologists do not withhold the data on which their conclusions are based from other competent professionals who seek to verify the substantive claims through reanalysis and who intend to use such data only for that purpose, provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and unless legal rights concerning proprietary data preclude their release” (Standard 8.14).

APA expects authors to adhere to these standards. Specifically, APA expects authors to have their data available throughout the editorial review process and for at least 5 years after the date of publication.

Authors are required to state in writing that they have complied with APA ethical standards in the treatment of their sample, human or animal, or to describe the details of treatment.

• Download Certification of Compliance With APA Ethical Principles Form (PDF, 26KB)

The APA Ethics Office provides the full Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct electronically on its website in HTML, PDF, and Word format. You may also request a copy by emailing or calling the APA Ethics Office (202-336-5930). You may also read “Ethical Principles,” December 1992, American Psychologist, Vol. 47, pp. 1597–1611.

Other information

See APA’s Publishing Policies page for more information on publication policies, including information on author contributorship and responsibilities of authors, author name changes after publication, the use of generative artificial intelligence, funder information and conflict-of-interest disclosures, duplicate publication, data publication and reuse, and preprints.

Visit the Journals Publishing Resource Center for more resources for writing, reviewing, and editing articles for publishing in APA journals.

Editors

Francesca Lopez, PhD
Penn State University, United States

Sharon Nichols, PhD
The University of Texas at San Antonio, United States

Editorial board members

Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, PhD
Arizona State University, United States

Christine Bae, PhD
Virginia Commonwealth University, United States

Sofia Bahena, PhD
University of Texas at San Antonio, United States

David Berliner, PhD
Arizona State University, United States

Hannah Carson Baggett, PhD
Auburn University, United States

Carly Champagne, PhD
University of Oregon, United States

Casey Cobb, PhD
University of Connecticut, United States

Dionne Cross, PhD
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States

John Davis, PhD
University of Texas at San Antonio, United States

Rebecca Friesen, PhD
University of Arizona, United States

DeLeon Gray, PhD
North Carolina State, United States

Aisha Griffith, PhD
University of Illinois Chicago, United States

Imogen Herrick, PhD
University of Kansas, United States

Avi Kaplan, PhD
Temple University, United States

Kevin Lawrence Henry, PhD
University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States

Lisa Looney, PhD
California State University, United States

Doug Lombardi, PhD
University of Maryland, United States

Julie Marsh, PhD
University of Southern California, United States

Jamaal Matthews, PhD
University of Michigan, United States

Michael Nussbaum, PhD
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, United States

Theresa Pfister, PhD
Wested, California, United States

Deborah Rivas-Drake, PhD
University of Michigan, United States

Alysia Roehrig, PhD
Florida State University, United States

Paul Rubin, PhD
University of Utah, United States

Gale Sinatra, PhD
University of Southern California, United States

Ian Thacker, PhD
University of Texas at San Antonio, United States

Adai Tefera, PhD
University of Arizona, United States

Sun Wei-Ling, PhD
University of Texas at El Paso, United States

Sarah Woulfin, PhD
University of Texas, United States

Akane Zusho, PhD
Fordham University, United States