Longitudinal Research

About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about longitudinal research, focusing in particular on: (i) defining longitudinal research as an observation and correlation based method of study involving observing a population over an extended period of time; (ii) establishing some strengths of longitudinal research as its usefulness for recording changes over time and across location; (iii) the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has studied a participant population for over eighty years; (iv) Farrington’s 1994 report of a forty-year study of preventing juvenile delinquency; (v) some strengths of longitudinal research, including its high validity and flexibility; (vi) some limitations of longitudinal research, including its cost and risk of drop-out; (vii) panel studies as the first form of longitudinal research, which involve sampling the same individual(s) at intervals over time; (viii) cohort studies as the second form of longitudinal research, which involve observing a chosen population for an extended period of time and does not involve the manipulation of variables or the environment; (ix) differentiating between retrospective and prospective forms of cohort studies; (x) some strengths and limitations of cohort studies.

About the lecturer

Dr Cody Porter is a senior lecturer in social psychology in the department of Health and Social Sciences at the University of the West of England. Dr Porter’s research interests are in information elicitation, lie detection and offending behaviour. Some of Dr Porter’s recent publications include ‘Implementing converged security risk management: Drivers, barriers, and facilitators’ (in press) and ‘Applying the asymmetric information management technique to insurance claims’ (2022).