A Call for Standards: Identifying Demographic and Methodological Variables in Infant Behavior-Analytic Research
Adopt the Singh checklist so every infant study reports race, SES, language, recruitment, and consent every time.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Bruzek et al. (2025) read every infant behavior-analytic paper they could find. They checked if each study told readers the baby's race, parents' income, or language spoken at home.
The team also looked for basic facts like where the baby was born and how families were invited into the study. They wanted to see which details authors always share and which ones they skip.
What they found
Age was the only detail every paper listed. No study ever said where the baby was born. Race, money, and language were missing most of the time.
In short, the field has no standard list of "must-report" facts for infant work.
How this fits with other research
Byiers et al. (2025) looked at the same pile of infant studies but asked a different question: what interventions were used? Their 69-study map sits inside the scope Bruzek now audits for missing details, so the problems apply to the exact body of work we already cite.
Kennedy (1992) sounded a similar alarm thirty years ago. That review found only 1 in 5 ABA papers bothered to report social validity. The new infant audit shows little has changed; we still leave out key context.
Tincani et al. (2024) and Huntington et al. (2024) both handed the field ready-made checklists for preregistration and social validity. Bruzek pushes the same solution: adopt the Singh checklist so every infant study reports race, SES, language, recruitment, and consent every time.
Why it matters
If you run or read infant research, you now have proof the story is half-told. Use the Singh checklist when you write your next paper, grant, or IRB. Ask authors for missing facts before you cite their work. Full demographics let us spot who is left out, repeat studies fairly, and build trust with families.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
A recent call has been made for a unified and detailed approach to demographic and methodological reporting in research with young children (Singh et al., Developmental Psychology, 60(2), 211–227, 2024). This need is especially relevant for infant research, because infants experience rapid developmental changes, cannot provide consent, and rely entirely on caregivers to meet their needs. Yet, although reporting practices in behavior-analytic studies have been reviewed more broadly, infant-focused behavioral studies have not been examined systematically. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines (Page et al., BMJ, 372, n71, 2021). We then used the guidelines described by Singh and colleagues to extract data on participant demographics (e.g., age, sex, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, language exposure, household composition) and methodological variables (e.g., selection criteria, recruitment, incentives, consent, ethics approval) from behavior-analytic studies conducted with infants aged 0–12 months. We found that demographic and methodological reporting varied from 100% (age) to 0% (birthplace). Given that infant-focused research is an expanding subdomain in behavior analysis, this is an appropriate time to establish clear reporting standards. We suggest that standardized reporting is necessary to ensure that infant research is not only representative but also appropriately replicable across relevant populations to provide accurate information for practice.
Perspectives on Behavior Science, 2025 · doi:10.1007/s40614-025-00479-9