Weakness Of Cross Sectional Study

The timing of the cross sectional snapshot may be unrepresentative of behavior of the group as a whole.

Weakness of cross sectional study. The weaknesses of cross sectional studies include the inability to assess incidence to study rare diseases and to make a causal inference. They do not consider what happens before or after the snapshot is taken. This is a particular problem when the characteristics of non responders differ from responders.

Associations identified may be difficult to interpret. Longitudinal studies may be prospective or retrospective and observational or experimental in design. Non response is a particular problem affecting cross sectional studies and can result in bias of the measures of outcome.

Such observations are often lost in cross sectional studies. Cross sectional studies also fail on the part of confounding factors. A cross sectional study is not longitudinal by design a is false.

However cross sectional studies may not provide definite information about cause and effect relationships. If a small sample is taken then the risk of error dramatically increases because the results could be due to chance or coincidence alone. Thus they are susceptible to sampling bias.

Unable to measure incidence. Since cross sectional studies only study a single moment in time they cannot be used to analyze behavior over a period of time or establish long term trends. The choice of a research or study design.

Additional variables may affect the relationship between the variables of interest but not affect those variables themselves. Cannot be used to analyze behavior over a period to time does not help determine cause and effect the timing of the snapshot is not guaranteed to. In a longitudinal study each participant is observed at multiple time points thereby allowing trends in an outcome to be monitored over time.