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If you’re a journalist, you might feel more comfortable with words than numbers. If you’re reading this, you might also be interested in research, which, more often than not, involves math — usually statistics. One of the more important statistical concepts used in interpreting research is effect size,  a measure of the strength of an association between two variables — say, an intervention to encourage exercise and the study outcome of blood pressure reduction.

Last week, Journalist’s Resource attended Health Journalism 2019, the annual conference of the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ), in Baltimore, Maryland. One of the sessions we attended, titled “Begin Mastering Medical Studies,” offered pointers for deciding which research is worth covering.