How we use research

The research section of this site answers the questions parents and teachers actually ask about times tables, with what the evidence really says, not with marketing slogans.

How we select sources

Where it exists, we cite peer-reviewed research: published studies checked by other experts, and meta-analyses. Where the evidence for a question is thin or missing, we say so. Where we cite official guidance (like the DfE’s Multiplication Tables Check framework) or articles written by researchers for a general audience, rather than scientific papers, we label them as such instead of putting them on the same level as a published study. The research we cite is about the principles TabTabTab is built on, such as spaced repetition, interleaving and immediate correction.

Every source on every page has a label that says what kind it is: peer-reviewed study, meta-analysis, official guidance, expert commentary or preprint. A preprint is research that has been made public but hasn’t finished peer review yet: we still cite it when it’s useful, but we flag it as provisional.

How pages get updated

Every science page shows a “Last reviewed” date. When important new evidence comes out, we update the page instead of leaving it as a snapshot of what we knew when we wrote it.