We consider a quantum Hall system of electrons confined to the uppermost Landau level and assume that the lower Landau levels are full and inert causing no Landau level mixing. While it is known that the problem of electrons interacting with the Coulomb interaction in a higher Landau level is mathematically equivalent to the problem of electrons in the lowest Landau level interacting with an effective interaction, the way the effective interaction can be calculated is not unique. We focus on the details of two different calculations of such effective interaction potentials in the uppermost Landau level and discuss the influence of one or another form of the effective potential on the stability of various correlated electronic phases in the quantum Hall regime. © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.