Question

Identify which study design is applicable for studying the following health outcomes and why?
1. Number of new cases of obesity among college students in Saudi Arabia in 2019.
2. The number of students with obesity who are physically active and the number of students with obesity who are physically inactive.
3. Give two difference between descriptive and analytic cross-sectional study.

Answer 1

1. Descriptive cross sectional study design is applicable to assess the prevalence of obesity among college students.

Because cross sectional studies are observational in nature. It is descriptive research, not casual or relational. It involves assessing the data from a population at one specific point of time. Here the new cases of obesity in the year of 2019 is to be assessed. Hence descriptive cross sectional study design is suitable.

2. Here analytical cross sectional study design is suitable. Analytical studies quantify the relationship or association between two variables. Here the relationsip between two variables is to be assessed. The present variables are obesity and physical activity. It also correlates the obesity with physical activeness to the obesity with physical inactiveness.

3 Difference between descriptive and analytic cross sectional study.

Descriptive Cross sectional study	Analytic cross sectional study
It provides the estimates of prevalence of disease. It provides detailed investigations of the individual. It have no prior hypotheses.	It assess the associations between different parameters. These are used to test hypotheses by selection and comparison of groups.