News tagged with longitudinal study

Aggressive behavior linked specifically to secondhand smoke exposure in childhood

Children who are exposed to secondhand smoke in early childhood are more likely to grow up to physically aggressive and antisocial, regardless of whether they were exposed during pregnancy or their parents have a history ...

Health created May 21, 2013 | popularity 3 / 5 (2) | comments 0

Study adds to evidence that cigarettes are gateway to marijuana

Teen smokers who rationalize their use of cigarettes by saying, "At least, I'm not doing drugs," may not always be able to use that line.

Health created May 05, 2013 | popularity 2 / 5 (1) | comments 0

Good night's sleep linked to happiness

(Medical Xpress)—Want a good night's sleep? Be positive – consistently. Although happiness is generally good for sleeping, when a person's happiness varies a lot in reaction to daily ups and downs, sleep suffers, reports ...

Health created Apr 29, 2013 | popularity 5 / 5 (4) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Gentile cites positive, negative effects of video games on the brain in Nature Reviews article

(Medical Xpress) -- Douglas Gentile says his own research has found both positive and negative effects from playing video games. And the Iowa State University associate professor of psychology cites examples of both in a ...

Psychology & Psychiatry created Dec 28, 2011 | popularity 2.2 / 5 (5) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Low vitamin D levels linked to depression, psychiatrists report

Low levels of vitamin D have been linked to depression, according to UT Southwestern Medical Center psychiatrists working with the Cooper Center Longitudinal Study. It is believed to be the largest such investigation ever ...

Health created Jan 05, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (5) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Flame retardants linked to lower-birth-weight babies

Exposure during pregnancy to flame retardant chemicals commonly found in the home is linked to lower birthweight babies, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Public ...

Health created Aug 30, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (3) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Midlife fitness staves off chronic disease at end of life: study

Being physically fit during your 30s, 40s, and 50s not only helps extend lifespan, but it also increases the chances of aging healthily, free from chronic illness, investigators at UT Southwestern Medical Center and The Cooper ...

Health created Aug 27, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Dating in middle school leads to higher dropout, drug-use rates

Students who date in middle school have significantly worse study skills, are four times more likely to drop out of school and report twice as much alcohol, tobacco and marijuana use than their single classmates, ...

Health created Mar 15, 2013 | popularity 3 / 5 (4) | comments 1

Memory in older men saved by 'Ram'

(Medical Xpress)—Having access to a personal computer lowers or decreases the risk of cognitive decline and dementia in older men by up to 40 per cent, according to researchers at The University of Western ...

Health created Sep 04, 2012 | popularity 2 / 5 (1) | comments 0

Study reveals multiple mechanisms may play role in Alzheimer's

(Medical Xpress)—Researchers investigating a known gene risk factor for Alzheimer's disease discovered it is associated with lower levels of beta amyloid—a brain protein involved in Alzheimer's—in cognitively healthy ...

Neuroscience created Oct 02, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Paper calls for more to be done to help young people with depression

Depression is one of the most common mental health problems in young people worldwide, but it often goes unrecognised and untreated. Left untreated, adolescent depression increases the risk of suicide, substance abuse, and ...

Psychology & Psychiatry created Feb 01, 2012 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Parents' praise predicts attitudes toward challenge 5 years later

Toddlers whose parents praised their efforts more than they praised them as individuals had a more positive approach to challenges five years later. That's the finding of a new longitudinal study that also found gender differences ...

Pediatrics created Feb 12, 2013 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

New study: Adolescents suffering from depression more likely to be bullied

A new study provides evidence that adolescents who suffer from depression are more likely to develop difficulty in peer relationships including being bullied at school.

Psychology & Psychiatry created Feb 08, 2012 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Puzzle play may help boost learning math-related skills

Children who play with puzzles between ages 2 and 4 later develop better spatial skills, a study by University of Chicago researchers has found. Puzzle play was found to be a significant predictor of cognition after controlling ...

Psychology & Psychiatry created Feb 16, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Risk-glorifying video games may lead teens to drive recklessly, new research shows

Teens who play mature-rated, risk-glorifying video games may be more likely than those who don't to become reckless drivers who experience increases in automobile accidents, police stops and willingness to drink and drive, ...

Psychology & Psychiatry created Sep 11, 2012 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Longitudinal study

A longitudinal study is a correlational research study that involves repeated observations of the same items over long periods of time — often many decades. It is a type of observational study. Longitudinal studies are often used in psychology to study developmental trends across the life span, and in sociology to study life events throughout lifetimes or generations. The reason for this is that unlike cross-sectional studies, longitudinal studies track the same people, and therefore the differences observed in those people are less likely to be the result of cultural differences across generations. Because of this benefit, longitudinal studies make observing changes more accurate and they are applied in various other fields. In medicine, the design is used to uncover predictors of certain diseases. In advertising, the Communicus System, the design is used to identify the changes that advertising has produced in the attitudes and behaviors of those within the target audience who have seen the advertising campaign.

Because longitudinal studies are observational, in the sense that they observe the state of the world without manipulating it, it has been argued that they may have less power to detect causal relationships than do experiments. But because of the repeated observation at the individual level, they have more power than cross-sectional observational studies, by virtue of being able to exclude time-invariant unobserved individual differences, and by virtue of observing the temporal order of events.

Longitudinal studies allow social scientists to distinguish short from long-term phenomena, such as poverty. If the poverty rate is 10% at a point in time, this may mean that 10% of the population are always poor, or that the whole population experiences poverty for 10% of the time. It is not possible to conclude which of these possibilities is the case using one-off cross-sectional studies.

Types of longitudinal studies include cohort studies and panel studies. Cohort studies sample a cohort, defined as a group experiencing some event (typically birth) in a selected time period, and studying them at intervals through time. Panel studies sample a cross-section, and survey it at (usually regular) intervals.

A retrospective study is a longitudinal study that looks back in time. For instance a researcher may look up the medical records of previous years to look for a trend.

For more information about Longitudinal study, read the full article at Wikipedia.
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