Yes, you can use research questions instead of hypotheses! Many of my initial articles only used research questions - refer to article examples on my ResearchGate profile.

It is certainly possible, but you need to be working in a research area where your topic has not been studied yet, so that descriptive data is a genuine contribution to knowledge.

Why not? Sure. But, is that what you want and is that what you are doing? If you have a research question, you almost necessarily have a hypothesis. Answer your research question with the information you have at present (educated guess/speculation)... that's more or less what a hypothesis is despite hard core 'scientifical' wannbe people claiming it's more complex than that. No, it's not. It should be simple and clear as with theories (well supported hypothesis - a little more robust) and laws (just what is in the universe, like gravity and evolution). Also, remember, social sciences and often qualitative (and quantitative) data within social sciences is more about percentages (i.e., ratios) rather than yes/no or true/false or works/doesn't work scenarios. How many people (what percentage of wha demographic group) have certain ideologies and behaviors and so forth and what are the influencing factors? How many people in the sample group 'feel' X, Y, or Z? Simplify, don't complicate. People who make it seem complicated are usually trying to hide their own insecurities and also trying to pretend "their ambiguous science-magic' is somehow more powerful. Hope this helps.

If it is just descriptive then ok.

Md Robiul Islam, I am afraid that I'm going to disagree with some contents of several of the posts up above. In essence, I think it's not at all necessary to have hypotheses for quantitative research. Some confusion could arise because it seems you have equated quantitative research with descriptive research - and I'm not sure whether that's helpful (in fact, I'm not at all sure whether they're always the same thing or not - and, if they're not the same, at which point a line is drawn to indicate the difference).

That aside, although researchers often have hunches about what results they might obtain, as some have indicated above, it's not at all necessary to have, and it's certainly not necessary to state, hypotheses in quantitative research.

I'll use the example of exploratory factor analysis. In that kind of analysis, researchers should let the data "speak" to them as a result of asking a broad research question such as "What will be the factor structure of these items?"

That, of course, is a different situation from confirmatory factor analysis in which researchers do put hypotheses forward (i.e., about how many factors are present in their data and which items will load on those factors) - and they run analyses that determine whether those hypotheses were accurate or not.

In essence, I think that context should determine whether researchers have hypotheses or research questions (the latter probably synonymous with aims).

Robert great explanation!! Thanks

As Anil Giri has mentioned, it's very well appropriate if it is just descriptive.

Descriptive research does not require a hypothesis.

yes if the study is primary and is exploratory in nature.

Yes, it is possible. But it is not every quantitative research.

Some quantitative researches such as descriptive and correlational research are sufficient with only research questions.

But, some such as experimental research are insufficient without hypotheses. They necessarily need hypotheses.

My understanding is that - descriptive research is primarily intended to generate hypotheses, not test hypotheses; but I came across certain descriptive research papers (e.g. descriptive - comparative) that include hypotheses.

I want to agree with Yar Zar Chit that if it is descriptive and correlational research , it requires hypothesis.

Of course! Moreover, descriptive studies are not intended to test a hypothesis.

Descriptive research is not necessarily hypothesis-driven. It is often used to generate hypotheses. It renders an in-depth analysis of particular characteristics/behaviors for better understanding. Its focus is on answering the what question, and not the why/how/when question. Therefore, it is unnecessary to have a hypothesis in descriptive research, adopting a quantitative approach to data collection, as long as no inference(s) are made out of data.

You might find the following source helpful.

https://www.statisticssolutions.com/writing-a-quantitative-research-question/

Good luck,

Md Robiul Islam Yes, it is very much possible to conduct a descriptive study without a hypothesis.