*”*The goal is inference. Scientific research is designed to make descriptive or explanatory inferences on the basis of empirical information about the world. Careful descriptions of specific phenomena are often indispensable to scientific research, but the accumulation of facts alone is not sufficient. Facts can be collected (by qualitative or quantitative researchers) more or less systematically, (…) but our particular definition of science requires the additional step of attempting to infer beyond the immediate data to something broader that is not directly observed.
“That something may involve descriptive inference—using observations from the world to learn about other unobserved facts. Or that something may involve causal inference—learning about causal effects from the data observed. The domain of inference can be restricted in space and time—voting behavior in American elections since 1960, social movements in Eastern Europe since 1989—or it can be extensive—human behavior since the invention of agriculture. In either case, the key distinguishing mark of scientific research is the goal of making inferences that go beyond the particular observations collected.” (King et al.,1994).