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Pilot Study

Given that conducting a study, particularly a large-scale study (e.g., longitudinal study), requires a great deal of resources and effort, researchers want to prevent potential risks that may result in a study failing. One of the ways to prevent risks is to conduct a pilot study. A pilot study is a mini-study conducted with a small sample of participants prior to a primary study. This entry explains two primary goals of pilot studies, describes various approaches to pilot studies, and provides guidelines and suggestions for designing and conducting a pilot study.

Two Major Goals of Pilot Studies

In general, pilot studies are conducted for two primary reasons. First, a pilot study is often used as a preliminary or exploratory study. It can be conducted as a small-scale study to get a better idea about main study. Specifically, this approach is often used for a research area that has not been widely explored yet. Conducting research in an unknown area takes a great deal of energy, time, and resources, and might take a high risk for failing a study due to lack of sufficient knowledge that is needed for designing a study. Thus, a pilot study can help to explore and assess which particular aspects need to be the focus in main study. In-depth interviews and focus group are commonly employed to achieve this goal.

Pilot studies are also used to try out a specific or an entire portion of a main study in order to identify potential problems. In this case, a pilot study can be viewed as a preliminary or test study. Although researchers may carefully design a study, there might be some potential errors and issues that could occur while conducting the study. The best protection is to pilot the study before launching it in order to identify any potential problems. This could include testing measurements, data collection methods, and data collection procedure.

Approaches to Pilot Study

Focusing on Instruments

Some pilot studies are focused on instruments. In particular, piloting measures (e.g., survey questions) is commonly practiced. Although there are numerous existing measures, sometimes researchers develop new sets of measures for a particular study. Pilot study helps test these new measures and ensure the establishment of strong measurement reliability and validity prior to adopting new measures in a main study.

Also, a pilot study can help researchers select clear and understandable language for participants. Because questionnaires are being created by researchers who are experts in the research area, there is a chance that the language used in survey questionnaires might not be clear to participants. The self-administered technique utilized for most survey-based studies does not provide direct, synchronous contact between researcher and participants and therefore, does not offer any way for researchers to clarify potential confusions prior to the study. A pilot study is one way to address potential misunderstandings in advance.

Furthermore, a pilot study can be an effective way of identifying other problems, including participants’ disease responding to difficult questions, which may cause participants to skip certain answers. For example, there might be a group of items that are sensitive to the selected participants given their culture or background (e.g., questions about politics, religion, or social norms). This might lead to a low response rate on important questions. By carrying out a pilot study, researchers can often identify and address sensitive issues in advance.

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