1. Now What?: I’ve Found Nothing
Steve Werner
Department of Management
Bauer College of Business
University of Houston

2. Overview So What? Re-evaluate your data Re-evaluate your measures
Re-evaluate your analyses
Re-evaluate your sample
Re-evaluate your study design
Re-evaluate your hypotheses
Re-evaluate your theory
Conclusion

3. So What? Publication bias against no results. Something’s wrong.
Bias against null hypotheses (well-deserved).

4. Re-evaluate Your Data Look for entry errors. Look for non-normality.
Look for outliers.
Look for excessive missing data.
Look for suspicious patterns.

5. Re-evaluate Your Measures
Look at reliability:
a. errors in reverse scoring.
b. bad items.
c. too few items.
Look at the dimensionality of the measure.
Look at combining measures.
Look at difference score measures.
Look at single item measures.
Consider new measures, variables, and constructs.

6. Re-evaluate Your Analyses
Over-specified model?
Under-specified model?
Suppressor variables?
Multi-collinearity?
Consider different techniques.

7. Re-evaluate Your Sample
Look at sub-samples.
Range restriction?
Consider increasing sample size.

8. Re-evaluate Your Study Design
Do a power analysis
Increase sample size
Relax alpha
1-tailed significance tests
Any way to reduce error variance?

9. Re-evaluate Your Hypotheses
Consider rewording hypotheses to make testing easier.
Consider moderator hypotheses.
Eliminate main effect hypotheses.
Consider mediator hypotheses.

10. Re-evaluate Your Theory
Consider theory boundaries.
Consider alternative theories.
Consider theory limitations.

11. Conclusion So What? Re-evaluate your data Re-evaluate your measures
Re-evaluate your analyses
Re-evaluate your sample
Re-evaluate your study design
Re-evaluate your hypotheses
Re-evaluate your theory
Conclusion