Longitudinal research

Emanuela Sala and Daniele Zaccaria

Chapter 17 in Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Research Methods in the Social Sciences, 2026, pp 121-127 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Longitudinal research can be described as a family of methods employed to study social change and establish the direction and magnitude of causal relationships. In this entry, we provide an overview of the methodological issues arising when doing quantitative longitudinal research. After discussing the relevance of longitudinal research, we describe the most common types of longitudinal designs, i.e. repeated cross-sectional designs and (prospective and retrospective) panel designs, discuss the key methodological issues that arise when collecting longitudinal survey data (i.e. panel conditioning, sample attrition, and memory errors), and present the most recent advances in longitudinal survey methodology (i.e. the collection of biomarkers and data linkage). We also provide an overview of the methods suitable for the analysis of longitudinal data, focusing specifically on event history analysis and panel data analysis, discussing advantages and disadvantages of each data analysis technique.

Keywords: Social Change; Causal Relationships; Panel; Attrition; Event History Analysis; Panel Analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781803921297
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