Solved – Effect size interpretation for Cliff’s delta similar to Cohen’s “small, medium and large effect”

cohens-deffect-sizenonparametricstatistical-power

In 1988 Cohen suggested the following interpretation for effect size: "small~0.20, Medium~0.50, Large~0.80". I'm aware that these values are rather arbitrary and that an extensive disclaimer in this respect is already in Cohen's work.

Yet, is there a similar interpretation for Cliff's delta?

I found something similar for Cramer's V
Small 0.1 0.2, Medium 0.3 0.5, Large 0.5. But nothing about Cliff's delta.

Best Answer

You can name effect sizes whatever you want and your names would be no less valid than Cohen's "T-shirt effect sizes". The thing about the T-shirt effect sizes is that, despite their widespread use, there's nothing to recommend them beyond "Cohen said so". (Meanwhile, Cohen said a lot of other, more important things about data analysis, but these have been largely ignored, probably because they would require taking data analysis more seriously.) A $d$ of .2 could be small in one context and large in another, which is unavoidable considering that $d$ is standardized and hence throws away the original units.

In general, if you're confronted with an effect and want to know how big it is in an intuitive sense, you should compare it to a plot of the data it came from, rather than standardizing it and looking for T-shirt sizes for the standardized form.