Basic Design and Implementation Steps for Cross-sectional Studies in General Practice and Primary Care

Abstract

Cross-sectional study is one of the classic research design methods, which is widely used in clinical research. Cross-sectional study designs are used to answer a large number of scientific questions in general practice research. This includes not only the investigation of population health characteristics, disease characteristics or health service status, but also a variety of research scenarios such as the construction of disease screening and diagnosis methods for community people. Therefore, this paper will sort out and summarize the key points of cross-sectional research in the field of general medicine, and provide reference for future research work. In the field of general practice, cross-sectional studies can be used for status description, comparative analysis, correlation factor analysis and exploration of community screening diagnostic methods. The clinical development of cross-sectional studies should include two stages, study design and study implementation. The design stage includes accurate extraction of study objectives, defining clinical factors such as study population, study factors and outcome indicators, and determining the method of sample acquisition, determining the basis for sample size and rational statistical analysis strategies. In the implementation stage, complete research plan and case report form should be used to present research design ideas, and data collection should be carried out under the premise of ethical approval. Meanwhile, quality of data management and statistical analysis methods in the plan should be strictly implem.

Keywords

• general practice|primary health care|cross-sectional studies|investigation|correlation analysis|diagnostic ability evaluation|research design