Weston completed a hypothesis test and found that he could not reject the null hypothesis. Which of the following is a valid reason for his conclusion?

A hypothesis test rejects the null hypothesis when its test statistic falls in the critical region. Therefore, if Weston could not reject the null hypothesis, the z-statistic lies outside the critical region. Whether the z-statistic is positive or negative by itself does not determine the conclusion.

AI-written and checked against the verified answer.