The Search for Meaningful Ways to Express the Effects of Interventions

—Researchers often describe the quantitative effects of interventions using terms related to their magnitude (e.g., large, small ) and practical impact (e.g., promising, significant ). This article describes some of these efforts. It suggests that providing such descriptors for effect sizes must be done with great caution and much additional context. The article also illustrates some translations of effect sizes that should be meaningful to audiences with limited statistical expertise and hopefully make it unnecessary for researchers to apply qualitative descriptors to them.