How Big Are Effect Sizes in International Education Studies?

A growing literature measures the impact of education interventions in low- and middle-income countries on both access and learning outcomes. But how should one contextualize the size of impacts? This article provides the distribution of standardized effect sizes on learning and access from 234 stud...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Educational evaluation and policy analysis 2022-09, Vol.44 (3), p.532-540
Main Authors: Evans, David K., Yuan, Fei
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic achievement
Access
Access to Education
Comparative Education
Developing Nations
Econometrics
Effect Size
Foreign Countries
International education
Learning
Literacy
Mathematics Achievement
Outcomes of Education
Policy making
Quasi-experimental methods
Reading Achievement
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Summary:A growing literature measures the impact of education interventions in low- and middle-income countries on both access and learning outcomes. But how should one contextualize the size of impacts? This article provides the distribution of standardized effect sizes on learning and access from 234 studies in low- and middle-income countries. We identify a median effect size of 0.10 standard deviations on learning and 0.07 standard deviations on access among randomized controlled trials. Effect sizes are similar for quasi-experimental studies. Effects are larger and demonstrate higher variance for small-scale studies than for large-scale studies. The distribution of existing effects can help researchers and policymakers to situate new findings within current knowledge and design new studies with sufficient statistical power to identify effects.
ISSN:0162-3737
1935-1062
DOI:10.3102/01623737221079646