Using Reporting Standards to Structure Research Manuscripts: A Narrative Review

Transparent research reporting is essential in ensuring the credibility, replicability, and applicability of scientific findings. This narrative review provides an overview of different reporting standards used for early childhood education research. Reporting standards are guidelines for which information should be reported in research papers. The purpose of this review is to aid researchers and practitioners in structuring manuscripts. We conducted a literature search for reporting standards relevant to early childhood education research in January 2025. We first identified frequently used research designs in early childhood education research. We then searched the databases Google Scholar, PubMed, and Scopus, using terms pertaining to research designs together with the phrase “reporting standards”. Relevant reporting standards were classified by intended use: general, quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, and review studies. We briefly described each research design, provided an example of each research design as used in early childhood education research, and listed reporting standards appropriate for each design. The article concludes with steps for using reporting standards to structure a manuscript.