The Use Of Hypotheses In Descriptive Investigations.

There is little information on the descriptive level of scientific research,especially in the field of social sciences, because it is linked to correlationalstudies, or it is simply not developed to its full extent. This study aimed toclarify the characteristics of descriptive studies within scientific research.Sometimes, the descriptive research level is confused with the descriptivetechnique or with the activity of describing a certain phenomenon, fact, orsituation that occurs; for this reason, it is essential to establish the minimumcharacteristics that must be considered to classify a study as being descriptive-level. Descriptive-level studies are essentially univariate; this means that onlyone variable is used, and this variable comes from exploratory-level studiesand is called a categorical variable. Within a descriptive level study, which isquantitative, there are sublevels, and for this, one must know one’s line ofresearch very well. Because it is a characterization study, one must review theliterature exhaustively to develop this univariate study. Descriptive studies arequantitative because they use primary statistics—i.e., they use the datacollected by the researcher—and should not be confused with the descriptionprocess used at any level of inquiry.