phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at o:3719 DOI 10.7717/peerj.14963 Reporting and interpreting non-significant results in animal cognition research How statistically non-significant results are reported and interpreted following null hypothesis significance testing is often criticized. This issue is important for animal cognition research because studies in the field are often underpowered to detect theoretically meaningful effect sizes, i.e., often produce non-significant p-values even when the null hypothesis is incorrect. Thus, we manually extracted and classified how researchers report and interpret non-significant p-values and examined the p-value distribution of these non-significant results across published articles in animal cognition and related fields. We found a large amount of heterogeneity in how researchers report statistically non-significant p-values in the result sections of articles, and how they interpret them in the titles and abstracts. Reporting of the non-significant results as "No Effect" was common in the titles (84%), abstracts (64%), and results sections (41%) of papers, whereas reporting of the results as "Non-Significant" was less common in the titles (0%) and abstracts (26%), but was present in the results (52%). Discussions of effect sizes were rare (<5% of articles). A p-value distribution analysis was consistent with research being performed with low power of statistical tests to detect effect sizes of interest. These findings suggest that researchers in animal cognition should pay close attention to the evidence used to support claims of absence of effects in the literature, and-in their own work-report statistically non-significant results clearly and formally correct, as well as use more formal methods of assessing evidence against theoretical predictions. eng Animals Research Design Animal Experimentation Cognition 2024-12-04T09:11:45.649Z LOMv1.0 Author BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Farrar;Benjamin G.; FN:Benjamin G. Farrar END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Vernouillet;Alizée; FN:Alizée Vernouillet END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Garcia-Pelegrin;Elias; FN:Elias Garcia-Pelegrin END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Legg;Edward W.; FN:Edward W. Legg END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Brecht;Katharina F.; FN:Katharina F. Brecht END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Lambert;Poppy J; FN:Poppy J Lambert X-ORCID:https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0573-7891 END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Elsherif;Mahmoud; FN:Mahmoud Elsherif END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Francis;Shannon; FN:Shannon Francis END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:O'Neill;Laurie; FN:Laurie O'Neill END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Clayton;Nicola S.; FN:Nicola S. Clayton END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Ostojić;Ljerka; FN:Ljerka Ostojić END:VCARD https://w3id.org/kim/hcrt/scheme https://w3id.org/kim/hcrt/text Textdokument Text LOMv1.0 yes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 application/pdf 1374317 https://phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at/o:3719 https://phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at/api/object/o:3719/thumbnail LOMv1.0 discipline