What should researchers generally avoid doing when a study fails to achieve statistical significance ($p > 0.05$)?

Answer

Automatically interpreting the result as proof that no effect exists.

A non-significant finding may indicate insufficient statistical power to measure what could potentially be a large effect, meaning the lack of significance is inconclusive regarding the non-existence of the effect.

What should researchers generally avoid doing when a study fails to achieve statistical significance ($p > 0.05$)?
SignificanceInterpretationeffectstatistic