Cross-sectional studies are observational research designs that examine a population or sample at a single point in time, measuring exposures, characteristics, and outcomes simultaneously to provide a snapshot of their distribution and association. Because data are collected at one moment rather than followed over t…
Cross-sectional studies are observational research designs that examine a population or sample at a single point in time, measuring exposures, characteristics, and outcomes simultaneously to provide a snapshot of their distribution and association. Because data are collected at one moment rather than followed over time, these studies are well suited to estimating the prevalence of conditions and to generating hypotheses about relationships between variables, though they generally cannot establish the temporal sequence needed to infer causation. They are widely used in epidemiology and public-health research for their efficiency and relatively low cost. Research in this journal illustrates the breadth of this design: a series of cross-sectional studies assessed neck, shoulder, and low-back musculoskeletal pain among Greek physical-education university students; another evaluated the risk of obstructive sleep apnea among patients with type 2 diabetes in India; and a community-based study estimated the prevalence of diarrhea and associated factors among children under five in a district of south-east Ethiopia. Additional work applied the approach to screening uptake for cervical cancer at a referral hospital. This page gathers peer-reviewed, open-access research relevant to data-driven, population-based study designs, including cross-sectional studies.
12 peer-reviewed articles, ranked by relevance. Each links to its DOI.
The 12 articles above have been cited 67 times in the scholarly literature. Citation data via OpenAlex and Crossref, updated Jun 2026.
A sample of recent works citing this journal's research on Cross-sectional Studies, linking to each citing work.