A non-parametric effect-size measure capturing changes in central tendency and data distribution shape.

Journal: PloS one
PMID:

Abstract

MOTIVATION: Calculating the magnitude of treatment effects or of differences between two groups is a common task in quantitative science. Standard effect size measures based on differences, such as the commonly used Cohen's, fail to capture the treatment-related effects on the data if the effects were not reflected by the central tendency. The present work aims at (i) developing a non-parametric alternative to Cohen's d, which (ii) circumvents some of its numerical limitations and (iii) involves obvious changes in the data that do not affect the group means and are therefore not captured by Cohen's d.

Authors

  • Jörn Lötsch
    Institute of Clinical Pharmacology, Goethe - University, Theodor Stern Kai 7, 60590 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
  • Alfred Ultsch
    DataBionics Research Group, University of Marburg, Hans - Meerwein - Straße, 35032 Marburg, Germany.