Longitudinal Studies
Sociology: AQA GCSE, topic 6.1.13
Longitudinal Studies
Longitudinal Studies
- A study of people over a long period of time.
- The aim is to record the changes over time.
- Longitudinal studies are useful when the researcher wants to:
- Track changes in the individual.
- AND track changes in the group that the individual is part of.
Advantages
- Researchers use longitudinal studies to monitor changes in many aspects of people's social lives such as educational achievement, employment and poverty.
- Longitudinal studies are valid since qualitative data is collected through observations and interviews.
- Longitudinal studies can track changes and establish trends.
Disadvantages
- They are time consuming.
- They are costly since it is hard to keep track of the participants over time as they might move somewhere else.
- Participants may leave the study at some point due to illness, death, personal reasons, contributing to the study’s attrition rate.
Disadvantages cont.
- If many participants decide to withdraw, the chances are that the sample will no longer be representative.
- A non-representative sample means that the data collected cannot be used to make generalisations.
- Participants might change their behaviour because they know they are being monitored, producing invalid data (observer effect).
Test yourself on Longitudinal Studies
What kind of data is gathered from longitudinal studies?