Descriptive analysis is an important first step for conducting statistical analyses. It gives you an idea of the distribution of your data, helps you detect outliers and typos, and enable you identify associations among variables, thus preparing you for conducting further statistical analyses.

However, descriptive analyses are neither difficult nor time consuming, if done systematically. It is easier to think about descriptive analyses if you divide them into two types:

1. Descriptive analysis for each individual variable
2. Descriptive analysis for combinations of variables

The best approach for conducting descriptive analyses is to first decide about the types of variables and then use approaches for descriptive analyses based on variable types.