Cross Sectional Longitudinal

A longitudinal study is a research study in which the research continues for a longer period and uses the same sample at each phase.

Cross sectional longitudinal. In a cross sectional study you collect data from a population at a specific point in time. That s why researchers might start with a cross sectional study to first establish whether there are links or associations between certain variables. Then they would set up a longitudinal study to study cause and effect.

Instead of collecting data over time on a single variable a cross section is framed allowing a researcher to see differences among population subsets in several categories. The main difference between longitudinal and cross sectional study is that longitudinal studies look at variables repeatedly over a period of time while cross sectional studies look at variables at a particular point in time. Cross sectional study is conducted with different samples.

Longitudinal studies and cross sectional studies are two different types of research design. In a longitudinal study you repeatedly collect data from the same sample over an extended period of time. On the contrary a cross sectional study is a research where the researcher analyses a particular context group of people or else a social phenomenon through a sample.

Cross sectional studies can be done more quickly than longitudinal studies. There are also cross sectional designs defined as sampled. Both longitudinal studies and cross sectional studies are two types of observational studies.

Cross sectional studies are descriptive studies neither longitudinal nor experimental. The key difference between the two studies stem from the fact that while a cross sectional study presents the researcher with a cross sectional analysis of the research a longitudinal study. Longitudinal design is a research study where a sample of the population is studied at intervals to examine the effects of development.

Unlike case control studies they can be used to describe not only the odds ratio but also absolute risks and relative risks from prevalences sometimes called prevalence risk ratio or prr. Longitudinal study is conducted with the same sample over the years.