How Big Are Effect Sizes in International Education Studies?

David Evans and Fei Yuan ()
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Fei Yuan: Harvard Graduate School of Education

No 545, Working Papers from Center for Global Development

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: achievement; assessment; international education/studies; literacy; effect size; econometric analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2020-08-27, Revised 2022-04-01
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cgd:wpaper:545

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