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Abstract
Open science practices have expanded to many fields in the natural and social sciences, though it
is unclear the extent to which they have permeated early childhood special education research,
particularly when looking across the range of methodologies (e.g., quantitative, qualitative,
mixed methods). Before making suggestions on what researchers in this field should be doing,
one must first understand what practices are currently being used and what potential barriers or
supports there might be to use. To this end, we will systematically review empirical research
(qualitative, mixed methods, and quantitative) in the early childhood special education literature.
We will code each study for the inclusion of open science practices (e.g., preregistration; shared
material, data, code; open access). We will then calculate descriptive statistics to explore the
implementation rates of open science practices, including the most used practices and differences
across study characteristics (e.g., journal, year) and methodologies (quantitative, qualitative, and
mixed methods). We will also compare implementation rates of open science practices to a
previous study on K-12 special education to begin to understand potential differences across
specialization areas in education. This systematic review is a first step in identifying potential
determinants for broader implementation of open science practices across a range of research and
specialty areas.