Cross-sectional research and longitudinal research are both types and methods of educational research, and some of them are said to be one of the types of educational research design, but their meanings are the same. Now they are often examined in the form of objective questions, so it is necessary to understand and distinguish their meanings and concepts.

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1. transverse study

Cross-sectional study, also known as cross-sectional study, refers to collecting relevant information around the research topic at a certain time point, describing the basic characteristics of the research object at that time point or discussing the relationship between different variables. The so-called "a certain point in time" does not mean a specific moment, but a relatively short continuous time, such as a week, a month or a certain stage of the development of things, and so on. For example, a researcher may be interested in studying the self-esteem of students in grades 4, 6 and 8. In a cross-sectional study, students' self-esteem will be evaluated at the same time, and the figures come from three groups of children in grade four, grade six and grade eight. In practice, horizontal research is the most common research method. Most descriptive studies, such as population census and public opinion polls, adopt horizontal research methods. The main characteristics of horizontal research are the unification of survey time, wide survey area, unified index system and high standardization of investigation and research, so it can be used to describe and compare various types of research objects. The main advantages of horizontal research are time-saving and low cost, and researchers don't have to wait for the subjects to grow up. However, due to the short time span involved, the survey indicators should not be too many, and the breadth and depth of the survey content are also limited, so it is difficult to make a concrete analysis of the occurrence and development of educational phenomena.

2. Longitudinal study

Longitudinal study, also known as follow-up study, refers to a systematic and qualitative study of people's psychological development over a long period of time. Phulel, a child psychologist, is the first psychologist to study the development of children's wisdom through systematic follow-up research and observation. Piaget, a famous Swiss child psychologist, also used a lot of longitudinal research methods to observe the development process of children's wisdom. Longitudinal research requires repeated testing of the psychological activities and characteristics of the same object within a specified time, so as to systematically and thoroughly understand the continuous process of psychological development and the laws of quantitative change and qualitative change. For example, in a longitudinal study of self-esteem, researchers may test a group of fourth-grade students' self-esteem, then reassess their self-esteem in the sixth grade, and then reassess it in the eighth grade. One of the greatest values of longitudinal study is that researchers can evaluate how individuals change with age. Its disadvantages are long cycle, easy to be affected by social environment changes, and the number of samples is naturally reduced.