We argue in this article that there are conditions in which publication of negative results can make a useful contribution. Three small-scale examinations of journal publication criteria for publishing negative results were conducted. We first reviewed 29 journals from education and school/counseling psychology to assess author submission…

We appreciate the thoughtful reactions of our colleagues to the "no prescriptives, please" proposal of Robinson et al. (2013), as well as the opportunity to respond to them. For the most part, our colleagues seem to agree that a problem exists in terms of unwarranted recommendations for practice appearing too often in educational…

To counteract what we see as a growing research-reporting concern, we propose the following editorial-policy change regarding the content of primary research articles in educational research journals: Contributors should restrict their discussion and conclusions to their data and not offer recommendations for educational practice nor speculate…

Robinson, Levin, Thomas, Pituch, and Vaughn (2007) examined 74 articles reporting nonintervention studies (i.e., studies with no researcher-manipulated variables) that appeared in 5 educational journals in 1994. Of these articles, 22 contained prescriptive statements (e.g., if teachers or students did X, then student outcome Y would result). In…

The authors examined the methodologies of articles in teaching-and-learning research journals, published in 1994 and in 2004, and classified them as either intervention (based on researcher-manipulated variables) or nonintervention. Consistent with the findings of Hsieh et al., intervention research articles declined from 45% in 1994 to 33% in…

In this article, the authors examined intervention studies that appeared in four educational psychology journals (Cognition & Instruction, Contemporary Educational Psychology, Journal of Educational Psychology, Journal of Experimental Education) and the American Educational Research Journal (AERJ) in 1983 and from 1995 to 2004. The majority of…