Descriptive statistics summarize which of the following?

Descriptive statistics are essential tools in research that provide a summary of the basic features of a dataset. They serve to organize and describe the data in a way that makes it easier to understand. Key measures included in descriptive statistics are the mean, median, and mode, which offer insights into the central tendency of the data. Additionally, descriptive statistics can also include measures of variability like range and standard deviation, which help illustrate how spread out the data points are.

This summary is particularly valuable in social work research, as it allows practitioners and researchers to quickly grasp the essential characteristics of the data they are analyzing, leading to more informed decision-making. It serves as a foundation for more complex analyses and interpretations that may later involve inferential statistics, but its focus is primarily on the straightforward attributes of the data being assessed.