Comparing effect sizes in follow-up studies: ROC Area, Cohen's d, and r.

This work outlines why AUC is the preferred measure of predictive or diagnostic accuracy in forensic psychology or psychiatry, and urges researchers and practitioners to use numbers rather than verbal labels to characterize effect sizes.

Abstract

In order to facilitate comparisons across follow-up studies that have used different measures of effect size, we provide a table of effect size equivalencies for the three most common measures: ROC area (AUC), Cohen's d, and r. We outline why AUC is the preferred measure of predictive or diagnostic accuracy in forensic psychology or psychiatry, and we urge researchers and practitioners to use numbers rather than verbal labels to characterize effect sizes.