2025-06-25 – 12:00-12:05 (Africa/Abidjan), Second floor 214
Numerous studies confirm that researchers frequently misinterpret key statistics in published articles. A particularly prevalent issue identified previously is the tendency of researchers to misinterpret nonsignificance as representing no true effect. Accordingly, the present study aims to re-investigate this issue – to clarify the prevalence of nonsignificance misinterpretations in published psychology articles and it's changes over time. To achieve this, we looked at nonsignificance statements in the discussion sections of 599 articles across three time points (2009, 2015, 2021) from ten psychology journals of varying impact factors. We then coded each statement as correctly or incorrectly interpreting nonsignificance. Our results reveal a higher prevalence of these misinterpretations compared to prior studies (81% incorrect). Based on these findings, we urge researchers to reconsider how they report and interpret their results, with a focus on improving accuracy and transparency in the interpretation of statistically nonsignificant results.
