Cross Sectional Designs

Cross sectional study one employing a single point of data collection for each participant or system being studied.

Cross sectional designs. Cross sectional research is an observational research methodology that tries to understand and sort out the differences between two or more variables. The reason why it is known as the cross sectional study design is due to the information regarding x and y which is collected shows what happens at a single point of time. Cross sectional studies are observational in nature and are known as descriptive research not causal or relational meaning that you can t use them to determine the cause of something such as a disease.

Cross sectional design is one of the most well known and commonly used study designs. Researchers in economics psychology medicine epidemiology and the other social sciences all make use of cross sectional studies in their work. It is used for examining phenomena expected to remain static through the period of interest.

A common example of cross sectional design is a census study in which a population is surveyed at one point in time in order to describe characteristics of that population including age sex and geographic location among other characteristics. The chosen variables usually have some similarities and one major distinction. In cross sectional research you observe variables without influencing them.

Researchers record the information that is present in a population but they do not manipulate variables. It can only let researchers see that the relationship is there for some reason. The benefit of a cross sectional study design is that it allows researchers to compare many different variables at the same time.

1 describe the basic design of a cross sectional study and outline the advantages and disadvantages of the design 2 describe and give examples of continuous and categorical binary nominal and ordinal variables 3 describe calculate and interpret risk ratios and odds ratios 4 describe calculate and interpret mean differences 5 explain the concept of a sample and. Revised on june 5 2020. It contrasts with a longitudinal s.

Cross sectional designs are sampled groups taken and examined from a continuum to determine if there is a difference between different sections of the continuum. This is unfortunately a little. Cross sectional studies are designed to provide correlated data that can be used to draw conclusions about population groups.