Critical Inquiry Exam 2 Practice

Collecting data from the same individuals at multiple time points defines a longitudinal design. This approach tracks how each person changes over time, allowing you to observe trajectories, onset, progression, or responses within individuals rather than comparing different people at a single moment. If you only collect data once from each subject, you’d have a cross-sectional snapshot, which can’t reveal how things evolve. The terms prospective and retrospective describe when data are gathered relative to the study start, and longitudinal studies can be either forward-looking or use existing records, but the defining feature is repeated measurements on the same subjects. So, measuring the same group repeatedly over time best fits the longitudinal approach.