WEIRD but Also Inconsistent: An Analysis of the Reporting Practices of Participant Samples Across Five Areas of Psychology

In this study, we systematically investigate the Methods sections of five journals covering core areas of Psychology: Social, health, clinical, developmental, and general psychological science. Journals were published by the British Psychology Society between January 2021 and December 2023 (N^articles = 661; N^samples = 1293). As expected, we found an over-reliance on Western perspectives: Participants from Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa made up 8.7% of samples combined. However, we also found substantial variation in whether and where participants' gender, race, SES indicators, and education were reported across different areas of Psychology, as well as different norms in the use of students and crowd-sourcing platforms. Given the challenges of representation in Psychology and the importance of interdisciplinary perspectives, we make a case for a unified standard of reporting that allows readers to more readily access how findings generalise to populations beyond those sampled.