Standardized Effect Size for Single-Case Research
A standardized effect size for single-case research expresses the difference between treatment and baseline phases in standard-deviation units so that it can be placed on the same scale as the familiar between-groups Cohen's d and combined across studies in a meta-analysis. The design-comparable estimator of Hedges, Pustejovsky, and Shadish (2012) explicitly models within-case and between-case variation and applies a small-sample correction, addressing the long-standing problem that nonoverlap indices and naive single-case d statistics are not comparable to the effect sizes used in group-design research.
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Sources
- Hedges, L. V., Pustejovsky, J. E., & Shadish, W. R. (2012). A standardized mean difference effect size for single case designs. Research Synthesis Methods, 3(3), 224–239. DOI: 10.1002/jrsm.1052 ↗
- Shadish, W. R., Hedges, L. V., & Pustejovsky, J. E. (2014). Analysis and meta-analysis of single-case designs with a standardized mean difference statistic: A primer and applications. Journal of School Psychology, 52(2), 123–147. DOI: 10.1016/j.jsp.2013.11.005 ↗
How to cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Standardized Mean-Difference Effect Sizes for Single-Case Designs. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/en/social-work/standardized-effect-size-single-case
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