Differentiate between panel data and cross sectional data.

Question

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

Cross-sectional data is a point in time snapshot across various data points
where as Panel data is collected over various points in time for thise data
points. This means that time-series analysis is possible in Panel data but
Cross-sectional data is useful to analyse information at historical point of
time.

Anonymous · Answer

panel data is longitudinal while cross sectional is a snapshot. benefit of cross
sectional is it's simpler, easier to understand, and harder to fudge... e.g. a
monthly snapshot on a pre-set specific day. the benefit of panel however is it's
richer and allows for clearer tracking over time. for example: say group A has
attrition of 10% and group B has attrition at 5%, after an exper (cross
sectional), however, if you look back a month you may see group A started w
attrition of 20% while group B's attrition was 3%. A lot depends on what the
report is trying to do. In an experiment, we need to pre-set when we start/stop
to have enough power and avoid cherry-picking when data seems right,in which
case panel may actually help, but for exploring and seeing trends over time
(especially dif btwn group) panel is the way to go. other items to watch out for
are attrition and survivor bias where we remove items from the final group...
(e.g. if we only look at the 5% of mice who survived extreme cold exposure we
may assume it makes them stronger... but it may be the mice who survived were
much stronger to begin w... we have to include the graveyard and compare the
initially assigned groups, not jsut the ones who made it through)

Differentiate between panel data and cross sectional data.

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