Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A psychology manuscript reporting a randomized lab experiment follows JARS-Quant: the Method section states how the target sample size was determined, discloses any data or participants excluded from analysis and why, and reports effect sizes alongside significance tests -- all specific JARS-Quant expectations that go beyond a generic Methods write-up.
- Is an instance
A manuscript reporting semi-structured interviews follows JARS-Qual: it states the researcher's role and relationship to participants (reflexivity), describes how codes or themes were developed from the data, and reports how many participants were involved and how they were recruited -- the qualitative-specific items JARS-Qual adds to a standard IMRaD structure.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A manuscript that simply follows IMRaD section order (Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion) without addressing any of JARS's specific per-section content requirements -- sample-size determination, exclusions, effect sizes for JARS-Quant, or reflexivity and coding process for JARS-Qual -- has the right skeleton but is not JARS-compliant; IMRaD is a structural convention, JARS is a content checklist layered on top of it.
Editorial commentary
Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS) is the American Psychological Association’s own framework for what a manuscript must state, section by section, to be considered adequately reported. It sits alongside — not instead of — discipline-specific reporting guidelines: a systematic review still follows PRISMA, a randomized trial still follows CONSORT, and a qualitative study is often still checked against COREQ or SRQR as a drafting aid. JARS is APA’s umbrella layer that applies across all of those, specifying what belongs in the abstract, introduction, method, results, and discussion sections depending on the study’s design.
The four JARS modules
- JARS-Quant covers quantitative research: studies built on numerical data and statistical analysis, including experiments, quasi-experiments, and observational designs. It specifies items such as how the sample size was determined, whether the study was pre-registered, what data or participants were excluded from analysis and why, and expects effect sizes to be reported alongside significance tests — not significance tests alone.
- JARS-Qual covers qualitative research: studies using natural-language or descriptive data such as interviews, focus groups, or textual analysis. It asks authors to state their own standpoint and role in relation to the data (reflexivity), describe how the sample was recruited and how many participants were involved, and explain how codes, categories, or themes were developed from the raw data.
- JARS-Mixed covers studies that combine quantitative and qualitative components. It layers the relevant JARS-Quant and JARS-Qual items onto each component and additionally asks authors to state the mixed-methods design type (e.g., convergent, explanatory sequential) and how the two strands of data were integrated.
- JARS-Race, Ethnicity, and Culture (JARS-REC) is a cross-cutting module, applicable regardless of which core module a study uses, that sets reporting expectations for how race, ethnicity, culture, and related demographic variables are described, measured, and analyzed in the study.
How JARS differs from design-specific reporting guidelines
JARS is published by APA and incorporated into the Publication Manual of the APA (7th edition), and is the reporting standard APA-affiliated and psychology-adjacent journals point authors to. It is intentionally general — it specifies manuscript-section content requirements that apply across quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods psychological and social-science research. This differs in scope from checklists built around one specific study design, such as PRISMA (systematic reviews and meta-analyses) or CONSORT (randomized controlled trials), which go into much more procedural depth for that one design (e.g., a PRISMA flow diagram tracking records identified, screened, and included). A manuscript reporting a randomized trial in a psychology journal may need to satisfy both: CONSORT for the trial-specific reporting items, and JARS-Quant for the surrounding manuscript-section expectations APA requires.
Why it matters for authors and reviewers
JARS functions as both a writing checklist for authors and a review checklist for editors and peer reviewers. Following the module matching a study’s design reduces the odds of a submission being sent back for missing required content (a common desk-rejection or revision trigger), and — because several JARS-Quant items (pre-registration status, exclusion criteria, effect sizes) map directly onto reproducibility concerns — following it also makes a quantitative study easier for other researchers to evaluate and replicate.
Related standards
- See CASRAI’s structured abstract format guide for how JARS’s abstract-content expectations interact with structured-abstract heading conventions.
- See CASRAI’s qualitative research methodology section guide, which covers COREQ and SRQR — the design-specific qualitative checklists JARS-Qual sits alongside.
- See CASRAI’s PRISMA and systematic review methodology guide and the PRISMA 2020 and CONSORT 2010 dictionary terms for the design-specific guidelines JARS does not replace.
- See the IMRaD structure term for the sectional skeleton JARS’s content requirements are layered onto.
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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