Longitudinal Study Psychology

Investigating changes in people over a period of time is at the core of developmental research in psychology. A common approach to developmental research is a cross sequential designs. The term cross-sectional in the context of an experimental design refers to the act of taking, and comparing, cross-sections of various age-based cohorts (Baltes, 1968). A cross-sectional design is useful when researchers want to examine how a variable changes over time, but does not have adequate resources to develop a longitudinal study. Instead of looking at the same group of people over time, as the longitudinal study does, the cross-sectional study looks at people of different age groups at the same time. The purpose of the study is to design a study which