Explain the significance of pilot testing in questionnaire building.

Answer

Once preliminary questionnaire has been developed a researcher must test the questionnaire on a small sample of respondents to identify and eliminate potential problems. This sampling process is known as pilot testing. It's advised that, a questionnaire must not be used in field survey without being adequately pilot tested. A pilot test provides testing of all features of a questionnaire including, wording, content, order, form and layout. Sample respondents selected for the pilot test should be similar to those who would be included in the actual survey in terms of their background characteristics, familiarity with the topic and attitudes and behaviours of interest. An initial personal interview based pilot test is recommended for all kinds of surveys since the researcher can observe respondents' attitudes and reactions towards every question. Once essential changes have been made using initial personal interview based pilot test, another pilot test could be conducted for telephone, mail or internet based survey. Most researchers recommend a pilot test sample between 15 and 30 respondents. If study is very large involving multiple stages, a larger pilot test sample can be required. Eventually, response obtained from the pilot test sample must be coded and analysed. These responses can provide a check on the adequacy of data obtained in answering the issue at hand.