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Effect sizes were introduced in Stata 13.

See the latest version of effect-sizes. See the new features in Stata 18.

Effect sizes

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Highlights

  • Comparison of means
    • Cohen's d
    • Hedges's g
    • Glass's Δ
    • Point/biserial correlation
    • Estimated from data or published summary statistics
  • Variance explained by regression and ANOVA
    • Eta-squared and partial eta-squared (η2)
    • Omega-squared and partial omega-squared (ω2)
    • Partial statistics estimated from data
    • Overall statistics from data or published summary statistics
  • All with confidence intervals


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esize, esizei, and estat esize calculate measures of effect size for (1) the difference between two means and (2) the proportion of variance explained.

Say we have data on mothers and their infants' birthweights. We want to calculate the effect size on birthweight of smoking during pregnancy:

. esize twosample bwt, by(smoke) all

Effect size based on mean comparison

                                   Obs per group:
                                       nonsmoker =    115
                                          smoker =     74
Effect Size Estimate [95% Conf. Interval]
Cohen's d .3938497 .0985333 .6881322
Hedges's g .3922677 .0981375 .685368
Glass's Delta 1 .3756723 .0787487 .6709925
Glass's Delta 2 .4283965 .1267939 .7272194
Point-Biserial r .1897497 .0482935 .3199182

We find that the difference in average birthweight is about 0.4 standard deviations.

We can reasonably assume birthweight is normally distributed; thus the reported confidence intervals are appropriate in this case.

In many cases, normality cannot reasonably be assumed. In such cases, we can obtain bootstrapped confidence intervals:

. bootstrap r(d) r(g), reps(200) dots nowarn:  esize twosample bwt, by(smoke)

(running esize on estimation sample)

Bootstrap replications (200)
----+--- 1 ---+--- 2 ---+--- 3 ---+--- 4 ---+--- 5 
..................................................    50
..................................................   100
..................................................   150
..................................................   200

Bootstrap results                               Number of obs      =       189
                                                Replications       =       200

      command:  esize twosample bwt, by(smoke)
        _bs_1:  r(d)
        _bs_2:  r(g)

  Observed Bootstrap Normal-based
  Coef. Std. Err. z P>|z| [95% Conf. Interval]
_bs_1 .3938497 .145659 2.70 0.007 .1083633 .6793362
_bs_2 .3922677 .1450739 2.70 0.007 .107928 .6766073

Effect sizes based on summary statistics

When you have summary statistics but not the underlying data, as you might when reading a journal article, you can use Stata's immediate command. Let's pretend our birthweight example was published. The hypothetical article recorded that for the 115 mothers who did not smoke, the average birthweight was 3,054.957 grams (sd=752.409) and that for the 74 smokers, the average was 2772.297 grams (sd=659.8075). We type

. esizei  115 3054.957 752.409   74 2772.297 659.8075

Effect size based on mean comparison

                                   Obs per group:
                                         Group 1 =    115
                                         Group 2 =     74
Effect Size Estimate [95% Conf. Interval]
Cohen's d .3938508 .0985343 .6881333
Hedges's g .3922687 .0981385 .6853691

Effect sizes for ANOVA (proportion of variability explained)

We can use the estat esize postestimation command to calculate effect sizes after fitting ANOVA models.

We fit a full factorial model of newborn birthweight on mother's smoking status and whether the mother saw a doctor during her first trimester:

. anova bwt smoke##drvisit

                           Number of obs =     189     R-squared     =  0.0471
                           Root MSE      = 717.382     Adj R-squared =  0.0317

Source Partial SS df MS F Prob > F
Model 4707585.52 3 1569195.17 3.05 0.0299
smoke 3275249.66 1 3275249.66 6.36 0.0125
drvisit 612385.434 1 612385.434 1.19 0.2768
smoke#drvisit 248303.954 1 248303.954 0.48 0.4882
Residual 95207713.1 185 514636.287
Total 99915298.6 188 531464.354

We can obtain the proportion of variability explained (effect sizes) measured by η2 or ω2. Here is the default η2 measure:

. estat esize

Effect sizes for linear models

Source Eta-Squared df [95% Conf. Interval]
Model .0471158 3 0 .1062782
smoke .033257 1 .0014433 .0975557
drvisit .006391 1 0 .0474531
c.smoke#c.drvisit .0026012 1 0 .0361357

Reported are full and partial η2 values along with their confidence intervals. We would have obtained similar output had we requested the ω2 measure.

Effect sizes for linear models (proportion of variability explained)

We can also use the estat esize postestimation command to calculate effect sizes after fitting linear models.

We replace the insignificant drvisit variable with the continuous variable age and fit the model using linear regression.

. regress bwt smoke##c.age

Source SS df MS Number of obs = 189
F( 3, 185) = 4.55
Model 6859112.22 3 2286370.74 Prob > F = 0.0042
Residual 93056186.4 185 503006.413 R-squared = 0.0686
Adj R-squared = 0.0535
Total 99915298.6 188 531464.354 Root MSE = 709.23
bwt Coef. Std. Err. t P>|t| [95% Conf. Interval]
smoke
smoker 797.9369 484.3249 1.65 0.101 -157.5731 1753.447
age 27.60058 12.14868 2.27 0.024 3.632806 51.56835
smoke#c.age
smoker -46.51558 20.44641 -2.28 0.024 -86.85368 -6.177479
_cons 2408.383 292.1796 8.24 0.000 1831.951 2984.815

This time, we request the ω2 estimates of effect size:

. estat esize, omega

Effect sizes for linear models

Source Omega-Squared df [95% Conf. Interval]
Model .0535463 3 0 .1223273
smoke .0091327 1 0 .0601797
age 0 1 0 .0231396
c.smoke#c.age .0219567 1 0 .0829855

Reported are full and partial ω2 values.

ANOVA and regression effect sizes from summary statistics

If we did not have the data to estimate this model but instead found the regression fit published in a journal, we could still estimate the overall η2 and ω2 from the model's degrees of freedom and the summary statistic that F(3, 185) = 4.55. We could type

. esizei  3 185 4.55

Effect sizes for linear models

Effect Size Estimate [95% Conf. Interval]
Eta-Squared .0687138 .0079234 .1364187
Omega-Squared .0536119 0 .1224147

The η2 agrees to three decimal places. Had we typed 4.5454107 rather than 4.55, we would have had full agreement to the shown eight decimal places.

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See the manual entry.

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See New in Stata 18 to learn about what was added in Stata 18.