Effect Size Reporting Practices in Applied Linguistics Research: A Study of One Major Journal

Abstract

Many surveys of effect size (ES) reporting practices have been conducted in social science fields such as psychology and education, but few such studies are available in applied linguistics. To bridge this gap and to echo the recent calls for more robust statistics from scholars in applied linguistics and beyond, this study represents the first attempt, in the field of applied linguistics, to focus upon ES reporting practices. With an innovative “two-standards” approach for coding, which overcomes the limitations with similar studies in other social science fields (e.g., communication), this study assesses the ES reporting practices over a span of 6 years in a major journal. Findings include the following: (a) the ES reporting rate is about 50% and (b) some improvement of ES reporting over time is in evidence. Future research directions (e.g., examining whether and how ES is interpreted after being reported) are suggested.