A systematic review of pre-registration in autism research journals.
Daniel Poole, Audrey Linden, Felicity Sedgewick and 2 others
PMID 39720839WHAT IT FOUND
Study plans registered before work began were rare in autism journals, found in about 2.23% of publications.
In sampled studies, many plans lacked detail, and only four of 14 fully reviewed matched or openly reported changes.
Key findings
01Pre-registration was rare in six autism research journals, with 192 pre-registered manuscripts among 8597 publications and an estimated prevalence of ~2.23%.
02In 31 sampled pre-registered manuscripts, 14 did not meet the minimum detail threshold for further review.
03Only four of the 14 manuscripts that received full quality assessment either did not deviate from the pre-registration or transparently disclosed all deviations.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
Only six autism specialist journals were searched, so pre-registered autism work in other journals is not counted. The quality assessment used a small random sample, so its findings are preliminary. 10 of the 12 intervention studies did not reach the detail threshold, and intervention studies were excluded from the resampled quality assessment. The paper does not show whether published findings replicate or are true; it only assesses how risky the tests were. Five sampled pre-registrations were uploaded retrospectively, but the assessment tools did not score prospective versus retrospective registration.
Declared interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest. D.P. was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, UK (Grant Number: ES/V002538/1).
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that autism interventions are ineffective. The paper studies whether analysis plans were registered before data collection, not patient outcomes.