Hi,
I am studying the effect of X on different diseases. The X shows a significantly increased risk for let's say 2 diseases (good to report), but for the rest of the diseases, X shows increased risk but non-significant. Should I write in the manuscript that increased risks were found but non-significant?
I will, of course, report the non-significant results in Table but should I write and discuss the nonsignificant results in the discussion section as well? Please extend your suggestions and also share any manuscript that has reported non-significant results.
Best
HI - Congrats on the research... sounds important.... especially when focused on causes of various diseases... Yes people are looking for the significant results... but I also like to see the ones that are not necessarily significant but do have some relationship... important to know that "spinach does not cause cancer" etc...
Good luck!
Hi, your work sounds interesting. To address your question, i will recall a recent conversation with a publisher considering a paper I authored. The publisher requested exact p values on all reported and tabled statistical test results seeking specifically those of NS results. I find this a bit unsettling as p values are computed for the explicit purpose of comparing to a criterion value to determine the likelihood of Type I error if the the null hypothesis was rejected. Whether a p value associated with a statistical test is
Are non-significant results worth to report in manuscript?
Personally to me yes. Reason being:
Besides reporting insignificant results, do your best with some additional literature reviewed to explain this observation as it will serve as good future research recommendation for yourself or others.
The result may be significant or non-significant, And the prime quality of the researcher is start research in his area of interest without any prediction of outcome.
Dr Kamath Madhusudhana
Yes, non-significant results are just as important as significant ones. If you are publishing a paper in the open literature, you should definitely report statistically insignificant results the same way you report statistical significant results. Otherwise you contribute to underreporting bias.
Yes, indeed! This is actually an area of improvement for further future research studies to be explored.
Yes for sure. You can build new research question based on how to improve these results in the future by considering other potential variables.
It is important for the world to know of the negative or non-significant findings so that they don't go down that path. Don't spend a lot of discussion on it. Focus on the significant results and have a short section discussing non-significant or negative results.
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