Advantages And Disadvantages Of Cross Sectional Studies

It is an affordable study method.
Advantages and disadvantages of cross sectional studies. Cannot be used to analyze behavior over a period to time. List of the advantages of a cross sectional study. A correctly structured cross sectional study must be representative of an entire demographic for it to provide useful information.
Cross sectional studies are much cheaper to perform than other options that are available to researchers. With cross sectional research you can collate data on many different variables in just the one study. Does not help determine cause and effect.
However a cross sectional study may be prone to non response bias if participants who consent to take part in the study differ from those who do not resulting in a sample that is not representative of the population. Ease of data gathering and assessment the nature of cross sectional studies offers a quick and easy way for an epidemiologist or any kind of researcher to quickly amass data. It provides good controls over the measurement process.
It offers a completeness with key data. It is possible to record exposure to many risk factors and to assess more than one outcome in a cross sectional study. List of the disadvantages of cross sectional studies 1.
As cross sectional studies don t take long to complete and don t require any follow up actions they can be very. Although it offers several advantages such as the ease of assessing the prevalence of diseases a cross sectional study nevertheless has limitations. The timing of the snapshot is not guaranteed to be representative.
The disadvantages of cross sectional study include.