What type of research involves studying the same people over a period of time usually several years or more?

What are the main types of qualitative approaches to research?

While there are many different investigations that can be done, a study with a qualitative approach generally can be described with the characteristics of one of the following three types:

Historical research describes past events, problems, issues and facts.  Data are gathered from written or oral descriptions of past events, artifacts, etc.  It describes “what was” in an attempt to recreate the past.  It is different from a report in that it involves interpretation of events and its influence on the present.  It answers the question: “What was the situation?” 

Examples of Historical Research:

• A study of the factors leading to the historical development and growth of cooperative learning
• A study of the effects of the historical decisions of the United States Supreme Court on American prisons
• A study of the evolution of print journalism in the United States through a study of collections of newspapers
• A study of the historical trends in public laws by looking recorded at a local courthouse

Ethnographic research develops in-depth analytical descriptions of current systems, processes, and phenomena and/or understandings of the shared beliefs and practices of a particular group or culture.  This type of design collects extensive narrative data (non-numerical data) based on many variables over an extended period of time in a natural setting within a specific context. The background, development, current conditions, and environmental interaction of one or more individuals, groups, communities, businesses or institutions is observed, recorded, and analyzed for patterns in relation to internal and external influences.  It is a complete description of present phenomena.

One specific form of ethnographic research is called a case study.  It is a detailed examination of a single group, individual, situation, or site. 

A meta-analysis is another specific form.  It is a statistical method which accumulates experimental and correlational results across independent studies.  It is an analysis of analyses.

Examples of Ethnographic Research:

• A case study of parental involvement at a specific magnet school
• A multi-case study of children of drug addicts who excel despite early childhoods in poor environments
• The study of the nature of problems teachers encounter when they begin to use a constructivist approach to instruction after having taught using a very traditional approach for ten years
• A psychological case study with extensive notes based on observations of and interviews with immigrant workers
• A study of primate behavior in the wild measuring the amount of time an animal engaged in a specific behavior

Narrative research focuses on studying a single person and gathering data through the collection of stories that are used to construct a narrative about the individual’s experience and the meanings he/she attributes to them.

Examples of Narrative Research:

• A study of the experiences of an autistic student who has moved from a self-contained program to an inclusion setting
• A study of the experiences of a high school track star who has been moved on to a championship-winning university track team

Longitudinal studies differ from one-off, or cross-sectional, studies. The main difference is that cross-sectional studies interview a fresh sample of people each time they are carried out, whereas longitudinal studies follow the same sample of people over time.

Features of longitudinal vs cross-sectional studies

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Some cross-sectional studies take place regularly, each time including a large number of repeat questions. For example, the British Social Attitudes Survey is a repeat cross-sectional study that has been carried out nearly every year since 1983. It provides excellent data about how Britain’s attitudes and values have changed (or not changed) over time.

Repeating the same questions in each round allows researchers to look at how society as a whole has changed over time. But because the questions are asked of a new sample every time, these studies can only reveal change at an aggregate level – they can shed little light on who has changed, or how or why.

For example, the 2015 British Social Attitudes (PDF) survey found that 66 per cent of people thought that “it’s everybody’s duty to vote” in a general election, down from 76 per cent in 1987.

What do these findings tell us? The data clearly show us that, overall, fewer people now than in the late-1980s think that citizens have a duty to vote. We can look at the characteristics of those who do or don’t agree with this view, and how the profile of these groups had changed over time. We can also examine how the likelihood of thinking that voting is a duty has changed among different population groups (for example, different age groups or ethnicities).

These sorts of calculations would provide some very helpful insights. But there are many things that this kind of cross-sectional data cannot tell us, but which longitudinal data would help us to address. For example:

• Which individuals changed their views about voting over the period? What are their characteristics? Do some people switch, and then switch back again?
• The British Social Attitudes findings show us the net or aggregate change over time – the difference between the proportion who thought voting was a duty in 1987 and the equivalent proportion now. But this tells us nothing about change at an individual level. For example, what proportion became more inclined to think voting is a duty and what proportion became less inclined? It is important to bear in mind that if these two proportions are similar, they could cancel one another out at a net level and make it appear that very little has changed over all, even though substantial numbers of people have changed their views.
• What factors best explain the transition away from thinking voting is a duty?

Sometimes data from longitudinal studies is analysed cross-sectionally. This means that the researcher is just focusing on the information collected at one round of the study, and not linking that information to data from earlier or later rounds.

What type of research involves studying the same people over a period of time?

Which type of research would take a long period of time?

What is the type of research where people of different ages are compared at the same point in time?

What design studies the same people repeatedly over time?