Well, a cross-sectional study would mean that you'd get a random group of the population and measure them in 1970 and then take another random group five years later and measure them, but it wouldn't be the same people necessarily, it would be different groups of people.

那么,横断面研究就是,1970年你在人群中随意选择一组人,并记录下相关数据,然后,五年后再随意选择一组人记录数据,但这不需要是同一组人,通常是不同的人

耶鲁公开课 - 关于食物的心理学、生物学和政治学课程节选

And the other thing you can do is take self reports like the ones you're doing, hopefully do enough of them, and a random enough sample of the population, that you can extrapolate from that sample to the whole population, and try to estimate what people are eating in that way.

还有其他可以做的,比如大家正在做的这种个体调查,希望能把它做的充分些,如果有充足的随机样本,就可以从样本推断出,整个总体,从而推断哪类人有这样的饮食习惯

耶鲁公开课 - 关于食物的心理学、生物学和政治学课程节选