Psychological Methods

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 of Douglas Steinley, PhD, 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 (7^th edition). Manuscripts may be copyedited for bias-free language (see Chapter 5 of the 7^th edition).

Submit Manuscript

General correspondence may be directed to the editorial office via email.

In the cover letter, include assurance that the manuscript is not under review elsewhere, that any primary data have not been published previously or accepted for publication, and that the appropriate ethical guidelines were followed in the conduct of the research.

Each manuscript must include on separate pages:

• author footnotes, which include acknowledgments of support and the name and address of the author to whom correspondence should be sent
• a title page with the author's name and affiliation when the research was done

Submissions are judged on their relevance to understanding psychological data, methodological correctness, and accessibility to a wide audience. Where appropriate, submissions should illustrate through concrete example how the procedures described or developed can enhance the quality of psychological research.

The journal welcomes submissions that show the relevance to psychology of procedures developed in other fields. Empirical and theoretical articles on specific tests or test construction should have a broad thrust; otherwise, they may be more appropriate for Psychological Assessment. Similarly, articles of interest to only a single subdiscipline of psychology may typically be more appropriate for a journal devoted to that specialty unless they make an exceptional contribution to the literature.

Also 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.

Psychological Methods is now using a software system to screen submitted content for similarity with other published content. The system compares the initial version of each submitted manuscript against a database of 40+ million scholarly documents, as well as content appearing on the open web. This allows APA to check submissions for potential overlap with material previously published in scholarly journals (e.g., lifted or republished material).

Types of articles solicited

• original theoretical, quantitative, empirical, and methodological articles
• reviews of important methodological issues
• tutorials
• articles illustrating innovative applications of new procedures to psychological problems
• articles on the teaching of quantitative methods
• reviews of statistical software
• replications (submissions should include “A Replication of XX Study” in the subtitle of the manuscript as well as in the abstract)

Editor’s Choice

Each issue of Psychological Methods will honor one manuscript as the Editor’s Choice.

Selection criteria

The Editor’s Choice article will be selected based on an assessment of the following criteria. In addition to the editor’s own assessment of these criteria, information provided in the peer reviews (numerical ratings and comments) and the associate editors’ decision letters will be used as data for selection.

• Diversity: Does the study advance our understanding of how legal institutions and policymakers should work with and treat diverse groups of people? Does the study contribute to improving services for underserved populations?
• Innovation: Does the study lead to significantly new knowledge, ask unexamined questions, and/or use highly novel methods to inform policy and legal practice?
• Methodological rigor: Do the methods meet the highest level of methodological rigor for the particular field of study?
• Policy significance/impact: Does the study have significant and direct implications that can change/improve/increase practices in the legal or policy areas?

Selection process

When the editor prepares the table of contents each quarter, the editor will identify the article that they believe best meets the criteria in consultation with the associate editors.    
Associate editors will be invited to nominate articles for Editor’s Choice. The editor will consider these nominations in their selection review process.

Masked review policy

Masked reviews are optional, and authors who wish masked reviews must specifically request them when submitting their manuscripts. Authors may suggest individuals qualified to do reviewing.

For masked reviews, authors should send one manuscript PDF file, with the title page and all other identifying information excluded. Authors will be asked to upload a separate title page file along with it, hidden from reviewers, with all of this information

Make every effort to ensure that the manuscript itself contains no clues as to author 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).

If your manuscript was mask reviewed, please ensure that the final version for production includes a byline and full author note for typesetting.

Journal Article Reporting Standards

Authors should review the APA Style Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS) for quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods. 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 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 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 of study preregistration (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 guidelines focus on transparency in methods reporting, recommending descriptions of how the researchers’ own perspectives affected the study, as well as the contexts in which the research and analysis took place.

Author contribution statements using CRediT

The APA Publication Manual (7th ed.) stipulates that “authorship encompasses…not only persons who do the writing but also those who have made substantial scientific contributions to a study.” In the spirit of transparency and openness, Psychological Methods has adopted the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) to describe each author's individual contributions to the work. CRediT offers authors the opportunity to share an accurate and detailed description of their diverse contributions to a manuscript.

Submitting authors will be asked to identify the contributions of all authors at initial submission according to this taxonomy. If the manuscript is accepted for publication, the CRediT designations will be published as an Author Contributions Statement in the author note of the final article. All authors should have reviewed and agreed to their individual contribution(s) before submission.

CRediT includes 14 contributor roles, as described below:

• Conceptualization: Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims.
• Data curation: Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later reuse.
• Formal analysis: Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data.
• Funding acquisition: Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication.
• Investigation: Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection.
• Methodology: Development or design of methodology; creation of models.
• Project administration: Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution.
• Resources: Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools.
• Software: Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components.
• Supervision: Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team.
• Validation: Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs.
• Visualization: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation.
• Writing—original draft: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation).
• Writing—review and editing: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision—including pre- or post-publication stages.

Authors can claim credit for more than one contributor role, and the same role can be attributed to more than one author.

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 Psychological Methods must meet the “disclosure” level for all eight aspects of research planning and reporting. Authors should include a subsection in the method section titled “Transparency and Openness.” This subsection should detail the efforts the authors have made to comply with the TOP guidelines. For example:

• We report how we determined our sample size, all data exclusions (if any), all manipulations, and all measures in the study, and we follow JARS (Applebaum, et al., 2018). All data, analysis code, and research materials are available at [stable link to 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.

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 note the legal or ethical reasons for not doing so. 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 (or the legal or ethical reason why it is not available).

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 not available because [legal or ethical reason].
• 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].

Preregistration of studies and analysis plans

Preregistration of studies and specific hypotheses can be a useful tool for making strong theoretical claims. Likewise, preregistration of analysis plans can be useful for distinguishing confirmatory and exploratory analyses. Investigators are encouraged to preregister their studies and analysis plans prior to conducting the research via a publicly accessible registry system (e.g., OSF, ClinicalTrials.gov, or other trial registries in the WHO Registry Network). There are many available templates; for example, APA, the British Psychological Society, and the German Psychological Society partnered with the Leibniz Institute for Psychology and Center for Open Science to create Preregistration Standards for Quantitative Research in Psychology (Bosnjak et al., 2022).

Articles must state whether or not any work was preregistered and, if so, where to access the preregistration. If any aspect of the study is preregistered, include the registry link in the method section.

For example:

• This study’s design was preregistered prospectively, before data were collected; see [STABLE LINK OR DOI].
• This study’s design and hypotheses were preregistered after data had been collected but before analyses were undertaken; see [STABLE LINK OR DOI].
• This study’s analysis plan was preregistered; see [STABLE LINK OR DOI].
• This study was not preregistered.

Length

Manuscripts should generally not exceed 12,000 words (approximately 40 double-spaced pages in 12-point Times New Roman font), not including references, tables, figures, and appendixes. Manuscripts longer than 12,000 words will be considered for publication only if they are judged to have the potential to make an exceptional contribution to the literature.

Manuscript preparation

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

Review APA's Journal Manuscript Preparation Guidelines before submitting your article.

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

Below are additional instructions regarding the preparation of display equations, computer code, and tables.

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.

Use Equation Editor 3.0 or MathType only for equations or for formulas that cannot be produced as Word text using the Times or Symbol font.

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 material

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.

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.

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.

Submitting supplemental materials

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

Abstract and keywords

All manuscripts must include an abstract containing a maximum of 250 words typed on a separate page.

Psychological Methods requires authors submit two abstracts.

One will be reviewed for its suitability as a description for scientists and for purposes of document retrieval from reference databases—this abstract is required at article submission.

The other abstract will be reviewed for its ability to communicate the essence of the article and its value to applied researchers who are not methodologists. Upon request, editors can assist the authors in constructing the nontechnical abstract, which should be submitted with the initial submission or the first revision.

After the abstract, please supply up to five keywords or brief phrases.

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 metafor 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.

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
  • Color (RGB, CMYK) images: 2 pixels
  • Grayscale images: 4 pixels
• Adobe Illustrator Images
  • 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

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)

Open science badges

Starting in January 2017, articles are eligible for open science badges recognizing publicly available data, materials, and/or preregistration plans and analyses. These badges are awarded on a self-disclosure basis.
At submission, authors must confirm that criteria have been fulfilled in a signed badge disclosure form (PDF, 33KB) that must be submitted as supplemental material. If all criteria are met as confirmed by the editor, the form will then be published with the article as supplemental material.

Authors should also note their eligibility for the badge(s) in the cover letter.

For all badges, items must be made available on an open-access repository with a persistent identifier in a format that is time-stamped, immutable, and permanent. For the preregistered badge, this is an institutional registration system.

Data and materials must be made available under an open license allowing others to copy, share, and use the data, with attribution and copyright as applicable.

Available badges are:

Open Data:
All data necessary to reproduce the reported results that are digitally shareable are made publicly available. Information necessary for replication (e.g., codebooks or metadata) must be included.

Open Data; Protected Access:
A Protected Access (PA) notation may be added to open data badges if sensitive, personal data are available only from an approved third-party repository that manages access to data to qualified researchers through a documented process. To be eligible for an open data badge with such a notation, the repository must publicly describe the steps necessary to obtain the data and detailed data documentation (e.g. variable names and allowed values) must be made available publicly.

Open Materials:
All materials necessary to reproduce the reported results that are digitally shareable, along with descriptions of non-digital materials necessary for replication, are made publicly available.

Preregistered:
At least one study's design has been preregistered with descriptions of (a) the research design and study materials, including the planned sample size; (b) the motivating research question or hypothesis; (c) the outcome variable(s); and (d) the predictor variables, including controls, covariates, and independent variables. Results must be fully disclosed. As long as they are distinguished from other results in the article, results from analyses that were not preregistered may be reported in the article.

Preregistered+Analysis Plan:
At least one study's design has been preregistered along with an analysis plan for the research — and results are recorded according to that plan.

Note that it may not be possible to preregister a study or to share data and materials. Applying for open science badges is optional.

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).

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.

Editor

Douglas Steinley, PhD
University of Missouri—Columbia, United States

Associate editors

Samantha Anderson, PhD
Arizona State University, United States

Sarah Depaoli, PhD
University of California, Merced, United States

Michael C. Edwards, PhD
Arizona State University, United States

Sacha Epskamp, PhD
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands

Emilio Ferrer, PhD
University of California, Davis, United States

Jessica Flake, PhD
McGill University, Canada

Sonya K. Sterba, PhD
Vanderbilt University, United States

Lijuan (Peggy) Wang, PhD
University of Notre Dame, United States

Consulting editors

Samantha F. Anderson, PhD
Arizona State University, United States

Deborah L. Bandalos, PhD
James Madison University, United States

Daniel J. Bauer, PhD
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States

Shelley A. Blozis, PhD
University of California, Davis, United States

Kenneth Bollen, PhD
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, United States

Wes Bonifay, PhD
University of Missouri—Columbia, United States

Holger Brandt, PhD
University of Tübingen, Germany

David V. Budescu, PhD
Fordham University, United States

Sun-Joo Cho, PhD
Vanderbilt University, United States

Sy-Miin Chow, PhD
Pennsylvania State University, United States

Patrick J. Curran, PhD
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States

Pascal R. Deboeck, PhD
University of Utah, United States

Philipp Doebler, Dr. rer. nat.
TU Dortmund University, Germany

Han Du, PhD
University of California—Los Angeles, United States

Craig K. Enders, PhD
University of California, Los Angeles, United States

Kathleen Gates, PhD
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, United States

Richard Gonzalez, PhD
University of Michigan, United States

Kevin J. Grimm, PhD
Arizona State University, United States

Gregory R. Hancock, PhD
University of Maryland, College Park, United States

Jeffrey R. Harring, PhD
University of Maryland, College Park, United States

Teague R. Henry, PhD
University of Virginia, United States

Lesa Hoffman, PhD
University of Iowa, United States

Michael D. Hunter, PhD
Pennsylvania State University, United States

Ross Jacobucci, PhD
University of Notre Dame, United States

Julian D. Karch, PhD
Leiden University, the Netherlands

Nidhi Kohli, PhD
University of Minnesota, United States

Hok Chio (Mark) Lai, PhD
University of Southern California, United States

Oliver Lüdtke, PhD
Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education, Germany

David P. MacKinnon, PhD
Arizona State University, United States

Keith A. Markus, PhD
John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York, United States

Daniel McNeish, PhD
Arizona State University, United States

Blakeley B. McShane, PhD
Northwestern University, United States

Jorge Luis Mendoza, PhD
University of Oklahoma, United States

Edgar C. Merkle, PhD
University of Missouri, United States

Mariola Moeyaert, PhD
University at Albany—State University of New York, United States

Jolynn Pek, PhD
Ohio State University, United States

Nilam Ram, PhD
Pennsylvania State University, United States

Tenko Raykov, PhD
Michigan State University, United States

Mijke Rhemtulla, PhD
University of California, Davis, United States

Edward Rigdon, PhD
Georgia State University, United States

Victoria Savalei, PhD
University of British Columbia, Canada

Michael A. Seaman, PhD
University of South Carolina, United States

Patrick E. Shrout, PhD
New York University, United States

Vincent S. Staggs, PhD
University of Missouri—Kansas City School of Medicine and Children’s Mercy Research Institute, United States

Stanley Wasserman, PhD
Indiana University, United States

Stephen G. West, PhD
Arizona State University, United States

Jelte M. Wicherts, PhD
Tilburg University, the Netherlands

Keith Widaman, PhD
University of California, Riverside, United States

Phillip K. Wood, PhD
University of Missouri—Columbia, United States

Ke-Hai Yuan, PhD
University of Notre Dame, United States

Guangjian Zhang, PhD
University of Notre Dame, United States

Zhiyong (Johnny) Zhang, PhD
University of Notre Dame, United States

Peer review coordinator

Nick Millington
American Psychological Association, United States

Abstracting and indexing services providing coverage of Psychological Methods^®

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• Journal Citations Report: Social Sciences Edition
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• TOC Premier

• Bayesian Data Analysis: Part II:

  Special issue of the APA journal Psychological Methods, Vol. 22, No. 4, December 2017. The issue features applications of Bayesian modeling techniques to an array of modeling contexts: regression models, item response models, structural equation models, dynamic mediation models, dynamic group membership models, and change point models.

• Bayesian Data Analysis — Part I:

  Special issue of the APA journal Psychological Methods, Vol. 22, No. 2, June 2017 on Bayesian data analysis. Articles focus on practical guidelines and general use, Bayes factor, and posterior predictive p values.

• Big Data in Psychology:

  Special issue of the APA journal Psychological Methods, Vol. 21, No. 4, December 2016. Four common themes emerged: the benefits of collaboration across disciplines, availability of large data sets on social media sites, ethical considerations when analyzing large data sets gained from public or private sources, and the necessity of validating predictive models in big data.

• Meta-Analysis Topics:

  Special issue of the APA journal Psychological Methods, Vol. 20, No. 3, September 2015. Includes articles about effect sizes, publication bias, tool accuracy, meta-regression, odds ratios, and risk ratios.

• Longitudinal Topics:

  Special issue of the APA journals Psychological Methods, Vol. 20, No. 1, March 2015. Includes articles about methods, models, and data analysis in longitudinal studies.

• Multi-Study Methods for Building a Cumulative Psychological Science:

  Special issue of the APA journal Psychological Methods, Vol. 14, No. 2, June 2009. Includes articles about integrative data analysis; psychometric approaches for developing measures across independent studies; using longitudinal data with multiple samples; independent longitudinal studies; and relative benefits of meta-analysis conducted with individual participant data versus aggregated data.

Transparency and Openness Promotion

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). The TOP Guidelines cover eight fundamental aspects of research planning and reporting that can be followed by journals and authors at three levels of compliance.

For example:

• Level 1: Disclosure—The article must disclose whether or not the materials are posted to a trusted repository.
• Level 2: Requirement—The article must share materials via a trusted repository when legally and ethically permitted (or disclose the legal and/or ethical restriction when not permitted).
• Level 3: Verification—A third party must verify that the standard is met.

At a minimum, empirical research, including meta-analyses, submitted to Psychological Methods must, at a minimum, meet Level 1 (Disclosure) for all eight aspects of research planning and reporting as well as Level 2 (Requirement) for citation and data, code, and materials transparency. Authors should include a subsection in their methods description titled “Transparency and Openness.” This subsection should detail the efforts the authors have made to comply with the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) guidelines.

The list below summarizes the minimal TOP requirements of the journal. Please refer to the Center for Open Science TOP guidelines for details, and contact the editor (Douglas Steinley, PhD) with any further questions. APA recommends sharing data, materials, and code via trusted repositories (e.g., APA’s repository on the Open Science Framework (OSF)). 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.

We encourage investigators to preregister their studies and to share protocols and analysis plans prior to conducting the research. Clinical trials are studies that prospectively evaluate the effects of interventions on health outcomes, including psychological health. Clinical trials must be registered before enrolling participants on ClinicalTrails.gov or another primary register of the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP). There are many available preregistration forms (e.g., the APA Preregistration for Quantitative Research in Psychology template, ClinicalTrials.gov, or other preregistration templates available via OSF). Completed preregistration forms should be posted on a publicly accessible registry system (e.g., OSF, ClinicalTrials.gov, or other trial registries in the WHO Registry Network).

The following list presents the eight fundamental aspects of research planning and reporting, the TOP level required by Psychological Methods, and a brief description of the journal's policy.

• Citation: Level 2, Requirement—All data, program code, and other methods developed by others must be  cited in the text and listed in the References section.
• Data Transparency: Level 2, Requirement—Article states whether the raw and/or processed data on which study conclusions are based are posted to a trusted repository and either how to access them or the legal or ethical reasons why they are not available.
• Analytic Methods (Code) Transparency: Level 2, Requirement—Article states whether computer code or syntax needed to reproduce analyses in an article is posted to a trusted repository and either how to access it or the legal or ethical reasons why it is not available.
• Research Materials Transparency: Level 2, Requirement—Article states whether materials described in the Method section are posted to a trusted repository and either how to access them or the legal or ethical reasons why they are not available.
• Design and Analysis Transparency (Reporting Standards): Level 1, Disclosure—The journal encourages the use of APA Style Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS-Quant and/or MARS).
• Study Preregistration: Level 1, Disclosure—Article states whether the study design and (if applicable) hypotheses of any of the work reported was preregistered and, if so, how to access it. Authors may submit a masked copy via stable link or supplemental material or may provide a link after acceptance.
• Analysis Plan Preregistration: Level 1, Disclosure—Article states whether any of the work reported preregistered an analysis plan and, if so, how to access it. Authors may submit a masked copy via stable link or supplemental material or may provide a link after acceptance.
• Replication: Level 1, Disclosure—The journal publishes replications.

Other open science initiatives

• Open Science badges: Offered
• Public significance statements: Offered
• Author contribution statements using CRediT: Required
• Registered Reports: Not published
• Replications: Published

Explore open science at APA.

Inclusive study designs

• Diverse samples

Definitions and further details on inclusive study designs are available on the Journals EDI homepage.

Inclusive reporting standards

• Bias-free language and community-driven language guidelines (required)
• Data sharing and data availability statements (required)

More information on this journal’s reporting standards is listed under the submission guidelines tab.

Other EDI offerings

ORCID reviewer recognition

Open Research and Contributor ID (ORCID) Reviewer Recognition provides a visible and verifiable way for journals to publicly credit reviewers without compromising the confidentiality of the peer-review process. This journal has implemented the ORCID Reviewer Recognition feature in Editorial Manager, meaning that reviewers can be recognized for their contributions to the peer-review process.

Masked peer review

This journal offers masked peer review (where both the authors’ and reviewers’ identities are not known to the other). Research has shown that masked peer review can help reduce implicit bias against traditionally female names or early-career scientists with smaller publication records (Budden et al., 2008; Darling, 2015).

Announcements

• Call for editorial fellowship nominations