Cohen (1988) hesitantly defined effect sizes as "small, d = .2," "medium, d = .5," and "large, d = .8", stating that "there is a certain risk in inherent in offering conventional operational definitions for those terms for use in power analysis in as diverse a field of inquiry as behavioral science" (p. 25).
Effect sizes can also be thought of as the average percentile standing of the average treated (or experimental) participant relative to the average untreated (or control) participant. An ES of 0.0 indicates that the mean of the treated group is at the 50th percentile of the untreated group. An ES of 0.8 indicates that the mean of the treated group is at the 79th percentile of the untreated group. An effect size of 1.7 indicates that the mean of the treated group is at the 95.5 percentile of the untreated group.
Effect sizes can also be interpreted in terms of the percent of nonoverlap of the treated group's scores with those of the untreated group, see Cohen (1988, pp. 21-23) for descriptions of additional measures of nonoverlap.. An ES of 0.0 indicates that the distribution of scores for the treated group overlaps completely with the distribution of scores for the untreated group, there is 0% of nonoverlap. An ES of 0.8 indicates a nonoverlap of 47.4% in the two distributions. An ES of 1.7 indicates a nonoverlap of 75.4% in the two distributions.