Wolf F M, Cornell R G
J Chronic Dis. 1986;39(8):605-8. doi: 10.1016/0021-9681(86)90185-2.
Correlations of 0.3 and 0.4 in psychological studies in chronic illness (e.g. diabetes) have been criticized as having little clinical importance. The present article suggests that correlation coefficients be interpreted as binomial effect size displays (BESD) as a means of gleaning the clinical importance of a given correlation coefficient. The BESD is easily understood, computed, and applied to research in chronic disease. An illustration is provided in which a r of 0.2 is shown to correspond to a BESD in which the success rate is improved from 40 to 60%. Using BESD to interpret the meaningfulness of relationships, correlations as low as 0.2 may have clinical importance.
慢性病（如糖尿病）心理研究中0.3和0.4的相关性被批评为临床意义不大。本文建议将相关系数解释为二项效应量展示（BESD），以此来洞察给定相关系数的临床意义。BESD易于理解、计算，并应用于慢性病研究。文中给出了一个例子，其中r为0.2对应的BESD表明成功率从40%提高到了60%。使用BESD来解释关系的意义时，低至0.2的相关性可能具有临床意义。
