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Dear all

Would anyone care to explain the following.

I have often read what are described as

1) A Prospective Study

2) A Descriptive Study

3) A Cross Sectional Study

I have an idea what each one is but can anyone post a formal definition?
What other formal descriptive titles are there for a research study?

Many thanks Dave Smith

Hi David

From my reading:

Prospective studies are RCT's in which subjects are selected and then followed forward through time.

Descriptive studies look to generate a hypothesis

Cross sectional studies are often survey style and look at a population at one specific time and could be described as a snapshot of the population

Hope this is helpful in some way - it is my interpretation of what the literature seems to imply.

A couple of good texts on this subject area that probably describe them better than I can are:

Greenhaulgh T. 1997. How to Read a Paper: The basics of Evidence Based Medicine. London. BMJ Publishing Group

And

Crombie IM. 1996. The Pocket Guide to Critical Appraisal. London. BMJ Publishing

And

Bowling A. and Ebrahim S. 2005. Handbook of Health Research Methods. Maidenhead. Open University Press

Cheers
Mark

Just came across this a resource to answer the original question from late last year:

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