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	Tvärsnittsstudier	Deskriptiv forskning
Ämnesområde	Forskningsdesign	Forskningsdesign
Familj	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Ursprungsår	1930s–1950s (formalized with large-scale opinion and health surveys)	Late 19th century; formalized in social/behavioral sciences ~1960s–1980s
Upphovsperson	Established through the social survey tradition (Bowley, Gallup, and others in the early-to-mid 20th century)	Francis Galton, Karl Pearson (early empirical tradition); formalized in social science by Fred Kerlinger
Typ	Quantitative non-experimental design	Non-experimental quantitative research design
Ursprungskälla	Fowler, F. J. (2009). Survey Research Methods (4th ed.). Sage Publications. ISBN: 978-1412958929	Creswell, J. W. (2014). Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches (4th ed.). Sage. ISBN: 978-1452226101
Alias	cross-sectional survey, single-occasion survey, prevalence survey design, snapshot survey	descriptive study, descriptive survey design, observational descriptive research, non-experimental descriptive research
Närliggande	4	3
Sammanfattning	Cross-sectional survey research administers a structured questionnaire or interview to a representative sample of a population at one point in time. It is the workhorse design for estimating prevalence, describing group characteristics, and mapping associations among variables across a wide range of disciplines — from public health and education to marketing and political science.	Descriptive research is a non-experimental quantitative design that systematically documents the characteristics, frequencies, or distributions of variables in a defined population at a given point in time. It answers 'what is' questions — who, what, when, where, and how much — without manipulating variables or drawing causal conclusions. It is one of the most widely used research designs across the social, behavioral, health, and education sciences.