The American Psychological Association (APA) has launched a website to guide researchers in psychology in using the APA Style Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS), which are aimed at enhancing the quality of published research by promoting transparency and facilitating the assessment of rigour.
The APA Style JARS companion website includes frequently asked questions, user-friendly checklists to facilitate the reporting process, information on training and learning opportunities, the history of APA's Journal Article Reporting Standards, and an informational video.
In January 2018, APA released two new sets of reporting standards. The first set applies to quantitative research and is an expansion of standards first issued in 2008. This set focuses on enhancing reproducibility. The second set applies to qualitative and mixed methods research, created in response to the increasing application of these methodologies. This set aims to enhance the assessment of methodological integrity. Both sets of standards and a related editorial are available via open access.
The standards are specific to psychological research and offer guidelines on the information needed in a research article to ensure that the elements included are comprehensible and that the study could be replicated.
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 modelling and Bayesian analysis; address the plurality of inquiry traditions, methods and goals, providing guidance on material to include across diverse qualitative research methods; and provide standards for reporting research using mixed methods designs, drawing on both qualitative and quantitative standards.
The American Psychological Association, the non-profit publisher of over 90 psychology journals, books and serial publications, is dedicated to advancing psychology as a science and as a means of promoting health, education and human welfare by disseminating psychological knowledge. APA journals are among the most widely circulated, most frequently cited and most often used publications in the behavioural and social sciences.
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