Types of Cross Sectional Research

Epidemiology

• Epidemiology cross-sectional research seeks to measure the occurrence of a disease in a given population. Epidemiologists use the cross-sectional method to gain a quick "snapshot" of the prevalence of the disease at the time of the study. The method best serves to ascertain where research should proceed and often creates more questions than answers. For example, the data gathered will not tell researchers anything about the cause and effect relationship of the status of the disease.

Education

• In education, researchers often employ cross-sectional research to gather data with the objective of drawing conclusions between different developmental groups. For example, an educational researcher may want to know whether class size affects student performance. The researcher might assign students in first, third and fifth grade to varying class sizes and at the end of the school year compare the data between each class size, grade level and academic achievement.

Psychology

• Developmental psychologists will use cross-sectional research to draw conclusions about the behaviors of humans throughout a lifespan. For example, a developmental psychologist may want to understand the reading habits of individuals throughout the lifespan. He will devise a questionnaire and hand it out to people of all different age groups. When he receives the completed questionnaires, he can review the data collected and construct of model of reading habits throughout the human lifespan. He may later use this data to further research or draw conclusions in conjunction with other data about a more complex subject.

Social Sciences

• Researchers in social science often employ cross-sectional research methods to gauge changes in perceptions or opinions over time. The researcher will usually conduct an interview, using the same questionnaire over and over again, with a wide variety of people in a given population at a particular point in time. He will then use this exact same questionnaire in the exact same way at another point in time and compare the data to detect changes in perception and opinion. This type of study is useful in marketing, healthcare, economics, political science and sociology.