Longitudinal study

Longitudinal study

A longitudinal study is a correlational research study that involves repeated observations of the same items over long periods of time - often many decades. It is a type of observational study. Longitudinal studies are often used in psychology to study developmental trends across the life span. The reason for this is that unlike cross-sectional studies, longitudinal studies track the same people, and therefore the differences observed in those people are less likely to be the result of cultural differences across generations. Longitudinal studies are also used in medicine to uncover predictors of certain diseases.

Because longitudinal studies are observational, in the sense that they observe the state of the world without manipulating it, it has been argued that they may have less power to detect causal relationships than do experiments. But because of the repeated observation at the individual level, they have more power than cross-sectional observational studies, by virtue of being able to exclude time-invariant unobserved individual differences, and by virtue of observing the temporal order of events.

Longitudinal studies allow social scientists to distinguish short from long-term phenomena, such as poverty. If the poverty rate is 10% at a point in time, this may mean that 10% of the population are always poor, or that the whole population experiences poverty for 10% of the time. It is not possible to conclude which of these possibilities is the case using one-off cross-sectional studies.

Types of longitudinal studies include cohort studies and panel studies. Cohort studies sample a cohort, defined as a group experiencing some event (typically birth) in a selected time period, and studying them at intervals through time. Panel studies sample a cross-section, and survey it at (usually regular) intervals.

A retrospective study is a longitudinal study that looks back in time. For instance a researcher may look up the medical records of previous years to look for a trend.

Longitudinal study designs

* Case study
* Case series
* Cohort study
* Case control study
* Randomized database study

Examples

*Born in Bradford
*British Household Panel Survey
* [http://www.busseltonhealthstudy.com Busselton Health Study]
*Dunedin Longitudinal Study
*Framingham Heart Study
*German Socio-economic Panel Study
*Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey
*Luxembourg Income Study (LIS)
*Minnesota Twin Family Study
*National Longitudinal Survey of Youth
* [http://www.psbh.be Panel Study of Belgian Households]
*Panel Study on Income Dynamics
*"Seven Up!"
* [http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/wlsresearch/ Wisconsin Longitudinal Study]

Repeated Cross-Sectional Surveys

*General Social Survey
*World Values Survey

ee also

*Time series


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужна курсовая?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Longitudinal study — A study done over the passage of time. For example, a longitudinal study of children with Down syndrome (trisomy 21) might involve the study of 100 children with this condition from birth to 10 years of age. Also called a diachronic study. The… …   Medical dictionary

  • longitudinal study — ilgalaikis tyrimas statusas T sritis Kūno kultūra ir sportas apibrėžtis Tų pačių asmenų ilgai trunkantis tyrimas; pakartotinis tiriamųjų stebėjimas, apklausa, medicininis tikrinimas, testavimas (mažiausiai du ar keletą kartų), paprastai praėjus… …   Sporto terminų žodynas

  • longitudinal study — See life history ; panel study …   Dictionary of sociology

  • longitudinal study — see cohort study …   The new mediacal dictionary

  • Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children — The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, also known as Children of the 90s and formerly the Avon Longitudinal Study of Pregnancy and Childhood, is a cohort study of children born in the former county of Avon, England during 1991 and… …   Wikipedia

  • The Chinese Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study — (CHARLS) is a longitudinal survey being conducted by the China Center for Economic Research at Peking University with Professor Yaohui Zhao of Peking University serving as Principal Investigator and Professors John Strauss of the University of… …   Wikipedia

  • National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health — The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (also called Add Health) is the only nationally representative study of adolescent sexuality, which has spawned over one thousand peer reviewed publications on many issues related to adolescent …   Wikipedia

  • English Longitudinal Study of Ageing — ELSA (English Longitudinal Study of Ageing) is being conducted by University College London, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen). ELSA is currently in its fourth wave of data collection. In the… …   Wikipedia

  • Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study — The Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS)[1] was designed to study the adaptation process of the immigrant second generation. Immigrant second generation is defined broadly as United States born children with at least one foreign born… …   Wikipedia

  • Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health — The Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health (SAGE) is run by the World Health Organization s Multi Country Studies unit in the Information, Evidence and Research Cluster. SAGE is part of the unit s Longitudinal Study Programme which is attempting …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”