Comparing Effect Sizes and their Confidence Intervals: A Primer on Equivalence Testing in Educational Research

Abstract

The objective was to teach Equivalence Testing applied to Educational Research to emphasize recommendations to increase quality of research. Equivalence Testing is a technique used to compare effect sizes or means of two different studies to see if they would be statisti-cally equivalent. For making accessible Equivalence Testing, this technique was explained with two examples by conducting calcula-tions by hand, using an online calculator, and a t table. Besides, the software R with an Equivalence Testing code was used, and its re-sults were discussed. Among other recommendations given, Equiva-lence Testing can be a useful tool for comparing means and effects within certain bounds that could hopefully imply a practical signifi-cance to provide meaning to findings.