Cross-sectional studies allow the study of many variables at a given time. Researchers can look at age, gender, income etc in relation to jogging and cholesterol at a very little or no additional cost involved. However, there is one downside to cross-sectional study, this type of study is not able to provide a definitive relation between cause and effect relation a cause and effect relationship is one where one action cause makes another event happen effect , for example, without an alarm, you might oversleep.
Therefore in this example stated above it is difficult to know if the daily joggers had low cholesterol levels before taking up jogging or if the activity helped them to reduce cholesterol levels that were previously high.
What is Longitudinal Study? The benefit of conducting longitudinal study is that researchers can make notes of the changes, make observations and detect any changes in the characteristics of their participants. One of the important aspects here is that longitudinal study extends beyond a single frame in time. As a result, they can establish a proper sequence of the events occurred. Continuing with the example, in longitudinal study a researcher wishes to look at the changes in cholesterol level in women above the age of 30 but below 40 years who have jogged regularly over the last 10 years.
In longitudinal study setup, it would be possible to account for cholesterol levels at the start of the jogging regime, therefore longitudinal studies are more likely to suggest a cause-and-effect relationship.
Overall, research should drive the design, however, sometimes as the research progresses it helps determine which of the design is more appropriate. Cross-sectional studies can be done more quickly as compared to longitudinal studies. Differences between Cross-Sectional Study and Longitudinal Study Cross-sectional and longitudinal study both are types of observational study, where the participants are observed in their natural environment.
Cross-sectional study Longitudinal study Cross-sectional studies are quick to conduct as compared to longitudinal studies. Longitudinal studies may vary from a few years to even decades.
A cross-sectional study is conducted at a given point in time. A longitudinal study requires a researcher to revisit participants of the study at proper intervals. Cross-sectional study is conducted with different samples.
Longitudinal study is conducted with the same sample over the years. Cross-sectional studies cannot pin down cause-and-effect relationship. Longitudinal study can justify cause-and-effect relationship. Additionally, in a longitudinal study, a survey creator does not interfere with survey participants. Instead, the survey creator distributes questionnaires over time to observe changes in participants, behaviors, or attitudes.
Many medical studies are longitudinal; researchers note and collect data from the same subjects over what can be many years. Longitudinal studies are versatile, repeatable, and able to account for quantitative and qualitative data. Consider the three major types of longitudinal studies for future research:. Panel study: A panel survey involves a sample of people from a more significant population and is conducted at specified intervals for a more extended period.
Most panel studies are designed for quantitative analysis, though they may also be used to collect qualitative data and analysis. Cohort Study: A cohort study samples a cohort a group of people who typically experience the same event at a given point in time.
Medical researchers tend to conduct cohort studies. Some might consider clinical trials similar to cohort studies. In cohort studies, researchers merely observe participants without intervention, unlike clinical trials in which participants undergo tests.
Retrospective study: A retrospective study uses already existing data, collected during previously conducted research with similar methodology and variables. While doing a retrospective study, the researcher uses an administrative database, pre-existing medical records, or one-to-one interviews.
There are many reasons why a researcher might want to conduct a longitudinal study. One of the essential reasons is, longitudinal studies give unique insights that many other types of research fail to provide. Additional data points can be collected to study unexpected findings, allowing changes to be made to the survey based on the approach that is detected.
The advantages and disadvantages of longitudinal studies show us that there is enormous value in the ability to find long-term patterns and relationships, so it is important to plan and take the necessary steps to avoid potential bias. Longitudinal studies are often confused with cross-sectional studies. Unlike longitudinal studies, where the research variables can change during a study, a cross-sectional study observes a single instance with all variables remaining the same throughout the study.
A longitudinal study may follow up on a cross-sectional study to investigate the relationship between the variables more thoroughly. The design of the study is highly dependent on the nature of the research questions. Whenever a researcher decides to collect data by surveying their participants, what matters most are the questions that are asked in the survey. Knowing what information a study should gather is the first step in determining how to conduct the rest of the study.
With a longitudinal study, you can measure and compare various business and branding aspects by deploying surveys. Some of the classic examples of surveys that researchers can use for longitudinal studies are:.
Market trends and brand awareness: Use a market research survey and marketing survey to identify market trends and develop brand awareness. Through these surveys, businesses or organizations can learn what customers want and what they will discard. This study can be carried over time to assess market trends repeatedly, as they are volatile and tend to change constantly. We have over 30K visitors to our website each month. Please consider donating to help our work and to keep this website running for you and thousands like you around the world.
A longitudinal survey is a correlational research study that involves repeated observations of the same variables over long periods of time, often many decades. It is often a type of observational study , although they can also be structured as longitudinal randomized experiments.
Longitudinal studies are often used in psychology to study developmental trends across the lifespan, and in sociology to study life events throughout lifetimes or generations. The reason for this is that unlike cross-sectional studies , in which different individuals with the same characteristics are compared, longitudinal studies track the same people and so the differences observed in those people are less likely to be the result of cultural differences across generations.
Longitudinal studies thus make observing changes more accurate and are applied in various other fields. In medicine, the design is used to uncover predictors of certain diseases.
0コメント