Registered Reports: a thesis workflow from Stage 1 to Stage 2

Fit and prerequisites

Registered Reports move review of the question and methods ahead of the results. Ordinary preregistration need not include review or in-principle acceptance (IPA). The journal’s conditions govern the commitment; a positive finding is not its purpose.

For a thesis, resolve institutional permission, defense timing and acceptable evidence of progress with the supervisor. Disclose already collected or inspected data to the editor. Relabeling a completed paper cannot recreate prospective review.

Write an executable Stage 1

Develop the rationale, question and planned methods before the results. Define the primary outcome, analytical unit, recruitment, justified sample size, stopping rule, exclusions, missing-data procedure and principal model. Clustered recruitment requires appropriate planning and analysis.

Map each hypothesis to measurement, model, interpretation rule and code location. Separate planned exploration. Identify pilot data and their actual purpose; anticipated results are not observations.

A worked reviewer response

In a hypothetical online-teaching study, a reviewer asks why class-level recruitment is analyzed as independent students. A substantive response revises the model and sample-size rationale for clustering, then records the revised passage and version. Merely adding a limitations sentence does not resolve the design problem.

IPA is conditional, not final acceptance. Preserve its letter, quality conditions and approved methods. Register the accepted protocol through the route the journal specifies.

Execution and deviations

Secure approvals, recruitment access and data handling before execution. If a measurement tool becomes unavailable, record the amendment date, reason, replacement and whether outcomes had been inspected. Consult the editor about material changes under journal policy.

A platform outage in the teaching case triggers a quality and missingness review, not automatic deletion. Document sensitivity analyses and distinguish outcome-informed changes from prespecified tests.

Stage 2 and thesis deadlines

Reconcile executed and accepted methods. Report every primary analysis, nonsignificant outcomes, quality checks and deviations; label additional work exploratory. Interpret estimates and uncertainty within the design.

Work backward from the defense to supervisor review, Stage 1 review, recruitment, analysis, writing and revision. Review duration is uncertain, so record a contingency accepted by your institution.

Completed teaching worksheet

This is a hypothetical teaching case, not observed data, an actual review or a publication acceptance. Numbers illustrate decisions.

Deliverables and completion checks

• Stage 1 manuscript and located reviewer responses.
• Protocol, IPA conditions and dated amendments.
• Execution comparison and Stage 2 manuscript.

Version and scope references: Center for Open Science — Registered Reports · OSF Support — Registration templates