Comparar métodos

	Investigación descriptiva comparativa	Investigación Causal-Comparativa	Investigación Descriptiva	Investigación por Encuestas
Campo	Diseño de investigación	Diseño de investigación	Diseño de investigación	Diseño de investigación
Familia	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Año de origen	Mid-20th century, formalized in research methods texts from the 1960s onward	1964	Late 19th century; formalized in social/behavioral sciences ~1960s–1980s	Late 19th century; methodologically systematised 1940s–1960s
Autor original	Codified in educational and behavioral research methods literature; no single originator	Fred N. Kerlinger	Francis Galton, Karl Pearson (early empirical tradition); formalized in social science by Fred Kerlinger	Francis Galton, Charles Booth, and early social statisticians; systematised by Paul Lazarsfeld and colleagues at Columbia in the 1940s
Tipo	Non-experimental quantitative research design	Non-experimental quantitative research design	Non-experimental quantitative research design	Quantitative (and mixed) non-experimental design
Fuente seminal	Fraenkel, J. R., Wallen, N. E., & Hyun, H. H. (2012). How to Design and Evaluate Research in Education (8th ed.). McGraw-Hill. ISBN: 978-0078097874	Kerlinger, F. N. (1964). Foundations of Behavioral Research. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.	Creswell, J. W. (2014). Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches (4th ed.). Sage. ISBN: 978-1452226101	Fowler, F. J. (2014). Survey Research Methods (5th ed.). Sage Publications. ISBN: 978-1452259000
Alias	comparative survey design, descriptive comparative study, group-comparison descriptive research, CDR	ex post facto research, causal-comparative design, retrospective causal study, CCR	descriptive study, descriptive survey design, observational descriptive research, non-experimental descriptive research	survey methodology, questionnaire research, survey design, survey study
Relacionados	3	3	3	4
Resumen	Comparative descriptive research is a non-experimental quantitative design that systematically documents characteristics, attitudes, behaviors, or conditions across two or more naturally occurring groups, then places those descriptions side by side to identify similarities and differences. Unlike causal-comparative designs, it makes no claim about why groups differ — it rigorously answers the question 'How do these groups compare on this characteristic?' without manipulating any variable.	Causal-comparative research is a non-experimental quantitative design in which the researcher compares two or more groups that already differ on an independent variable — one that was not manipulated — to investigate possible causes or consequences of that difference. Because group membership is pre-existing rather than randomly assigned, the design can suggest causal relationships but cannot establish them with the certainty of a true experiment. It is widely used in education, psychology, and social sciences when experimental manipulation is impractical or unethical.	Descriptive research is a non-experimental quantitative design that systematically documents the characteristics, frequencies, or distributions of variables in a defined population at a given point in time. It answers 'what is' questions — who, what, when, where, and how much — without manipulating variables or drawing causal conclusions. It is one of the most widely used research designs across the social, behavioral, health, and education sciences.	Survey research is a quantitative (and sometimes mixed-methods) design in which a researcher collects standardised self-report data from a sample drawn from a defined population, using a questionnaire or structured interview. It is the dominant non-experimental strategy for describing population characteristics, estimating prevalence, mapping attitude distributions, and testing bivariate or multivariate associations across social, behavioural, and health sciences.