How to do ANOVA write-up when there is no significant effect at all? I was conducting a 'recall of negative words' memory experiment with a two-way between-group ANOVA and got no significant main effects and no significant interaction! How can I go about explaining this in the Discussion section? Do I just state that it seems that my 2 between subjects factors have no influence over memory? Or do I try to fault the sample size [N=67].
All help will be greatly appreciated!!!
PS: Do I write: the lack of significant main effects allowed for rejection of all experimental hypotheses? it that correct?
 A: There are at least two schools of thought here.
First school: Since nothing was significant, there's nothing statistical you can say except that you failed to reject the null hypothesis. You could, however, then give some explanation of why you couldn't reject it. This explanation, though, would have to be substantive rather than statistical. E.g., there could be omitted variables, the sample could be unusual, etc.
Second school: Despite the lack of significance, you can still comment on the effect sizes of the model. You have to preface this by some phrase such as "Although the results were not statistically significant, they indicate that ...." and then go into what you found.
I am more sympathetic to the second school, myself, but in fields like psychology (which it seems is your field) that may be a difficult thing to 'sell'.
One thing you should not say is that there is "no effect" - that comes close to "accepting the null" which is not right. You should say "no statistically significant effect". 
