ACADEMIA Letters Descriptive studies are quantitative and can carry hypotheses José Ochoa-Pachas, Universidad Autónoma del Perú In Latin America in general and in Peru in particular, the idea is that descriptive studies are qualitative and exploratory research; It is also assumed that these scientific inquiries do not carry hypotheses and that they are extremely simple. Given the multiple complications generated by the pandemic throughout 2020, it is necessary to clarify the importance of these studies and their value for the development of scientific research in the countries of South America. The principles that regulate the taxonomy of science, exhaustiveness and exclusion must be taken into account. Comprehensiveness implies that the research must be located in one of the groups considered in the taxonomy that was taken as an ordering rule, and no study should be left outside the classification groups. And the principle of exclusion shows that the sets that have been elaborated from a specific classification criterion do not have common components among themselves, so there is no encounter between them; which implies that a study cannot simultaneously belong to two groups in a specific order. It is recurrent to consider that descriptive studies are qualitative, however, they are the first step of quantitative research that, using descriptive and inferential statistics, shows frequency tables, point estimates and hypothesis tests. Despite having a single analytical variable, they tend to develop other concomitant variables that interact with this type of variable, which are called characterization factors. In this context, all descriptive studies must be located in a certain space and time since these inquiries must have a position where they will be developed in a specific time allowing the establishment of location and temporality with the so-called characterization variables. The variable of interest must be dimensioned and the indicators for these dimensions have to be established. The designs that are applied are the community and epidemiological ones Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: José Ochoa-Pachas, josmar59@gmail.com Citation: Ochoa-Pachas, J. (2021). Descriptive studies are quantitative and can carry hypotheses. Academia Letters, Article 2760. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2760. 1 that allow the development of retrospective, cross-sectional, observational studies. It should be remembered that descriptive studies are univariate, and to call this singularity as a dependent or independent variable is not appropriate, and they do not correspond to this level because descriptive studies having a single analytical variable must be named appropriately, because It fulfills the function of directing the analysis, of guiding the study, which is why it is called the variable of interest (Supo, 2015), because it is the variable on which the inquiry is focused. Likewise, the so-called characterization factors accompany the variable of interest, which are variables that must be analyzed and interact with the main variable. These factors must also be dimensioned in order to have all the components that allow an exhaustive analysis in the development of the study. There are also authors who consider that these investigations should be called correlational descriptive studies (Cubo et al. 2019; Hernández et al. 2014; Arbaiza, 2013; Grimes & Schulz, 2002), which generates confusion because the statistical treatment of a Descriptive study is different from that of a correlational investigation. In principle, descriptive studies have a single analytical variable, while correlational studies must have two analytical variables. To this is added that in qualitative research there is a technique called qualitative description (QD) and that is taken as a research label and that generates confusion by establishing that they are used in descriptive scientific inquiries (Kim, Sefcik, & Bradway, 2016) Descriptive investigations are the beginning of quantitative studies, and present three sublevels linked to statistical objectives: pure descriptive studies that allow describing, characterizing the phenomenon or facts to be studied; point estimation studies which allow statistical inference to be made because the lower and upper limits must be calculated based on a confidence interval that frequently in social studies is 95%; and verification studies that allow hypothesis testing. The sublevel that corresponds to the description of the fact or phenomenon, can present numerical variables or categorical variables; In the first case, descriptive statistics are used using the mean, the mode, the median, absolute frequencies, relative frequencies, the average, and the standard deviation; if the sublevel corresponds to the point estimate, the prevalence or incidence can be calculated; This last word (incidence) generates confusion and is usually used as an influence, which is discarded because the incidence refers to the number of new cases of a certain event or event that occur in a population in a set period of time , in a descriptive study. For the verification sublevel, where there is a hypothesis test, if the variable is categorical, the goodness of fit test is used; and if the variable is numeric, the student’s t is used for a single sample. On the other hand, descriptive studies do not work with samples, but with groups to which Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: José Ochoa-Pachas, josmar59@gmail.com Citation: Ochoa-Pachas, J. (2021). Descriptive studies are quantitative and can carry hypotheses. Academia Letters, Article 2760. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2760. 2 a specific statistic must be applied that will allow comparing the values obtained from the studied group, comparing it with a parameter of the population, that if the variable of Interest is categorical, the goodness of fit test will be used and if the variable is numeric, the t-student will be used for a single sample. References Arbaiza, L. (2013). Cómo elaborar una tesis de grado. Lima: Esan ediciones. Cubo, S., Martín, B., & Ramos, J. (2019). Métodos de investigación y análisis de datos en ciencias sociales y de la salud. Madrid: Ediciones Pirámide. Grimes, D., & Schulz, K. (2002). Descriptives studies:what they can and cannot do. The Lancet, 359(9301), 145-149. Obtenido de https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0140673602073 Hernández, R., Fernández, C., & Baptista, P. (2014). Metodología de la investigación (6a. ed. ed.). México: McGraw-Hill. Kim, H., Sefcik, J., & Bradway, C. (2016). Characteristics of Qualitative Descriptive Studies: A Systematic Review. Research in Nursing & Health, 23-42. doi:10.1002/nur.21768 Supo, J. (2015). Cómo empezar una tesis. Arequipa: Bioestadístico EIRL. Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: José Ochoa-Pachas, josmar59@gmail.com Citation: Ochoa-Pachas, J. (2021). Descriptive studies are quantitative and can carry hypotheses. Academia Letters, Article 2760. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2760. 3