effect size

This term is a technical statistic used primarily in quantitative research and meta-analyses to describe the strength of a finding. While a p-value indicates whether an effect exists, the effect size describes how large that effect actually is, providing a standardized metric that allows researchers to compare results across different studies regardless of their sample sizes.

In academic writing, it is typically used in the results or discussion sections of a paper. It is often paired with specific measures such as Cohen's d, Pearson's r, or eta-squared. Misusing this term in a general context to mean a "big result" can be imprecise, as it refers specifically to the standardized magnitude of the difference or relationship.