Cosmological perturbations in a gravity with quadratic order curvature   couplings
  We present a set of equations describing the evolution of the scalar-type cosmological perturbation in a gravity with general quadratic order curvature coupling terms. Equations are presented in a gauge ready form, thus are ready to implement various temporal gauge conditions depending on the problems. The Ricci-curvature square term leads to a fourth-order differential equation for describing the spacetime fluctuations in a spatially homogeneous and isotropic cosmological background. 
H. Noh and J. Hwang