Descriptive measures in clinical research are used to do what?

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Descriptive statistics focus on summarizing what the data look like in the sample, using measures of central tendency and spread. Describing sample characteristics through the mean, median, or mode provides a concise snapshot of the typical value in the data. This is exactly what descriptive measures are for—conveying the main features of the dataset without making inferences about cause, testing hypotheses, or building future-predictive models. Causality requires inference from study design and statistical testing; hypotheses come from theory and are tested with inferential methods; predictive models use the data to forecast new observations. So the primary role of descriptive measures is to summarize the sample characteristics through mean, median, or mode.