| 4.5 Time Horizon
Research design can be longitudinal or cross-sectional. A cross-sectional study focuses on particular phenomenon at a specific period of time (Saunders, et al., 2000). In a cross-sectional study, one sample of a population can be taken and studied at a particular time as in a single cross-sectional study or two or more samples of a target population could be studied once as in multiple cross sectional study (Malhotra & Birks, 2007).
A study is said to be longitudinal where a particular phenomenon is studied at different periods of time. This can also take a form of a single longitudinal study where only one sample is studied at different time periods or multi-longitudinal where two or more samples are studied at different periods of time.
In this study we chose a cross-sectional study because data was collected from a cross section of hoteliers once and not for different periods of time.
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