The phrase "a discreet study" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when referring to a study that is conducted in a careful and unobtrusive manner, often to protect privacy or confidentiality.
Example: "The researchers conducted a discreet study to gather sensitive information without alarming the participants."
Alternatives: "a private study" or "a confidential study".
But I'm not sure the BBC, who have commissioned our film, are really looking for a discreet study in bathos.
It's difficult to take your eyes off Come to Me, an angry, pleading lithograph with a blood-red background, or off Getting Ready for the Ball, a sly tribute to Las Meninas, or Refectory, a discreet study in girl dynamics.
And it's the case that if one doesn't look back to history, one tends to see each case -- Kosovo, the debate over NAFTA, relations with China -- as a distinct, discreet case study with no overarching view of what it says about our past or how it relates to our past and what it might say about our future.
But an after-dark tour of about half a dozen popular clubs proved that their house styles can be decoded with a little study and a discreet debriefing of the doorman.
The study focused a priori on a discreet set of well-characterized cortical and subcortical regions of interest (ROIs) known to be instrumental in appetitive desire and food stimulus evaluation4.
Regardless, for large mobile predators such as sharks, this system will be more useful for species that have a focal point, i.e. a discreet area of intense activity to centre the study around.
No studies measured self-management as a discreet concept.
Instead, she called a former teacher and friend, William Aide, who was the director of keyboard studies at the University of Toronto and asked him to make a discreet inquiry.
Wang Peisan gave a discreet smile.
Many raffles strike a discreet, respectful tone.
Now Rocha is undergoing a discreet transformation.
