Abstract
School leaders today are making important decisions regarding education innovations based on published average effect sizes, even though few understand exactly how effect sizes are calculated or what they mean. This article explains how average effect sizes are determined in meta-analyses and the importance of including measures of variability with any average effect size. By considering the variation in effect sizes among studies of the same innovation, education leaders can make better decisions about innovations and greatly increase the likelihood of achieving optimal results from implementation.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-27-2019
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192636519889151
Repository Citation
Guskey, Thomas R., "Interpreting Average Effect Sizes: Never a Center without a Spread" (2019). Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology Faculty Publications. 43.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/edp_facpub/43
Notes/Citation Information
Published in NASSP Bulletin, v. 103, issue 4.
© 2019 SAGE Publications
Under SAGE's Green Open Access policy, the Accepted Version of the article may be posted in the author's institutional repository and reuse is restricted to non-commercial and no derivative uses.
The document available for download is the authors' post-peer-review final draft of the article.