CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY DESIGNS

INTRODUCTION:  Also known as one-shot or status studies, are the most commonly used design in the social and medical sciences. This design is best suited to studies aimed at finding out the prevalence of a phenomenon, situation, problem, attitude or issue, by taking a cross-section of the population. They are useful in obtaining an overall ‘picture’ as it stands at the time of the study.

PROCEDURES:  In this type of study design, data is collected at a single point in time and it will sometimes require the respondents/participants to recall the past experience about the problem under study.

ADVANTAGES OF CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY DESIGNS:  There are a number of advantages attached to this type of study design.

1.  It is time saving, in that data can be collected in a single and once.

2.  It saves costs of collecting data.

3.  It is one of the best study designs when no follow up is needed.

DISADVANTAGES OF THIS STUDY DESIGN:  This study design comes with disadvantages as well;

1.  It is easy to encounter bias and confounding factors.

2.  Since data is collected at a single point in time, the study design is not good for studying trends of phenomena.

RELATED;

1.  FEMINIST RESEARCH  

2.  EXPLORATORY RESEARCH 

3.  EXPERIMENTAL STUDY DESIGNS

4.  RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

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