Purpose: In an effort to build capacity of future doctoral leaders in speech-language pathology, this review examined journals relevant to language and literacy research for trends in the size of data sets and the use of statistical analyses, randomization, and replication. Method: A systematic review of empirical studies was conducted. Investigators examined 120 randomly selected scholarly articles published in 2013 and 2014 in 10 journals, including 4 focused on communication disorders and 6 with relevancy to the study of language and literacy. Results: Based on trends in the randomly selected sample of 120 journal articles, data sets varied largely in terms of size. Random assignment was used 22% of the time. Studies used a wide variety of types of designs and statistical analyses. Larger data sets and statistical methods using multiple levels of analysis were more prevalent in journals that were not specifically within the field of speech-language pathology. Conclusion: The findings of this systematic review support the need to prepare future scholars to employ rigorous methods and analyses in their research. Potential ways to enhance the infrastructure required for utilization of innovative statistical advances, large-scale data sets, experimental design, and replication are discussed.