Describe an Evaluate Longitudinal studies.

Longitudinal studies are psychological investigations carried out over a long period of time, or at various intervals over a long period of time. They allow psychologists to study changes in behaviour and, for instance, partiality to crime, and how this behaviour and the attitudes of those partaking in such behaviour change over time and why.
Strengths of a longitudinal study is that it shows genuine development and growth and how situations adapt and change over time rather then it being a snapshot of what I s going on at that current time it provides more in depth and detailed information for the observation it also helps to establish a more reliable judgement on the situation.
Another Strength is that it allows effects long term to be examined instead of just examining the short term effects as the long term effects could be crucial in concluding results.
It also avoids participant variables as you will be using the same participant over the whole course of the time this allows factors such as personality and background to be minimalized from affecting the background. It firther avoids cohort affect as other factors such as background and personal issues wouldn’t differ if using same participant.
As it provides in depth data the validity of the study can be increased due to the long term examination. By also using same participant it allows cause and effect to be established.
This allows for direct comparisons unlike cross sectional that uses different and therefore unlike participants.
On the other hand weaknesses of longitudinal studies would be that it is time consuming and expensive as it is conducted over a long period of time a lot of resources needed it also lacks generalizability. As generalizability issues as factors affecting the group may not affect a different groups at another time.
Another main weakness