Interpreting Effect Sizes of Education Interventions

Researchers commonly interpret effect sizes by applying benchmarks proposed by Jacob Cohen over a half century ago. However, effects that are small by Cohen’s standards are large relative to the impacts of most field-based interventions. These benchmarks also fail to consider important differences i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Educational researcher Vol. 49; no. 4; pp. 241 - 253
Main Author: Kraft, Matthew A.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.05.2020
American Educational Research Association
Subjects:
Academic Achievement
Benchmarking
Benchmarks
Causal Models
Education policy
Educational Change
Educational Policy
Educational Research
Effect Size
Intervention
Policy Analysis
Program Evaluation
Scaling
Social sciences
evaluation
experimental research
program evaluation
education policy
education reform
policy analysis
effect size
ISSN:0013-189X, 1935-102X
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Researchers commonly interpret effect sizes by applying benchmarks proposed by Jacob Cohen over a half century ago. However, effects that are small by Cohen’s standards are large relative to the impacts of most field-based interventions. These benchmarks also fail to consider important differences in study features, program costs, and scalability. In this article, I present five broad guidelines for interpreting effect sizes that are applicable across the social sciences. I then propose a more structured schema with new empirical benchmarks for interpreting a specific class of studies: causal research on education interventions with standardized achievement outcomes. Together, these tools provide a practical approach for incorporating study features, costs, and scalability into the process of interpreting the policy importance of effect sizes.
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ISSN:0013-189X
1935-102X
DOI:10.3102/0013189X20912798