How To Do A Cross Sectional Study

This type of research is designed to discover clues about population groups that can then help other study types be able to determine why an illness occurs or how.

How to do a cross sectional study. Unlike other types of observational studies cross sectional studies do not follow individuals up over time. Cross sectional studies are observational studies that analyze data from a population at a single point in time. In a cross sectional study you collect data from a population at a specific point in time.

Cross sectional studies are often used in developmental psychology but this method is also used in many other areas including social science and education. Researchers can conduct a cross sectional study with the same set of variables over a set period. The longitudinal study uses time as the main variable and tries to make an in depth study of how a small sample changes and fluctuates over time.

Although cross sectional studies do not look at the reasons why certain events happen in a population group it can provide a foundation for future studies to look at this issue. In medical research social science and biology a cross sectional study also known as a cross sectional analysis transverse study prevalence study is a type of observational study that analyzes data from a population or a representative subset at a specific point in time that is cross sectional data. The participants in this type of study are selected based on particular variables of interest.

Similar research may look at the same variable of interest but each study observes a new set of subjects. 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.

A cross sectional study involves looking at data from a population at one specific point in time. Types of cross sectional study. A cross sectional survey may be purely descriptive and used to assess the burden of a particular disease in a defined population.

For example a random sample of schools across london may be used to assess the prevalence of asthma among 12 14 year olds. In economics cross sectional studies typically involve the use of cross sectional regression in order to sort out the existence and magnitude of causal effects of one independent.