What Is a Pilot Survey—and Why Should You Run One?

You’ve agreed your research objectives, written the questions and decided who to contact. Your survey is ready to go.

Before launching it to your full audience, there’s one more useful step: try it with a small group of people.

A pilot survey gives you an opportunity to find problems while they’re still straightforward to fix. It can reveal confusing wording, missing answer options and practical issues that are easy to overlook when you’ve been working closely on a questionnaire.

What Is a Pilot Survey?

A pilot is a small trial of your survey before the main research begins.

Participants work through the questionnaire using the method you intend to use for the wider project. That might mean completing it online, answering questions over the telephone or filling in a paper form.

The aim is to check whether the survey works as intended. Can people understand the questions? Can they answer accurately? Does the process run smoothly?

It’s also an opportunity to check whether the answers will give you the information you need.

Test With People Who Reflect Your Audience

Colleagues can help spot spelling mistakes and broken links, but they may already understand your organisation’s language and services.

Your customers might approach the same questions differently.

Where possible, involve people who reflect the audience you want to hear from. Depending on your project, this could include new customers, long-standing service users or people with different levels of digital confidence.

You don’t need a large group to begin finding useful issues. Choose participants who can help you test the different experiences and routes your questionnaire needs to accommodate.

Look for Questions That Need Explaining

A question can seem clear to its author and still confuse the person answering it.

Terms such as “service delivery”, “case resolution” or “customer engagement” may have a specific meaning inside your organisation. Respondents may interpret them differently.

During the pilot, ask participants whether any questions were difficult to understand. You can also invite them to explain what they thought a question was asking.

For telephone research, note where interviewers need to clarify the wording. If the same explanation keeps coming up, the question may need rewriting. Our guide to what makes a good research question explores how to keep your questions clear and focused.

Check That the Answer Options Fit

Sometimes people understand a question perfectly but can’t find an answer that reflects their experience.

You might ask how someone contacted your organisation and discover that an important contact method is missing. Or you may ask people to rate a service they haven’t used.

Check whether respondents need options such as:

• Not applicable

• Don’t know

• Haven’t used this service

• Other, with space to explain

Use these where they make sense for the question. Giving people a suitable answer is more useful than encouraging them to choose the closest available option.

Test the Whole Journey

A pilot should cover more than the questionnaire itself.

Check the invitation, survey link, instructions and completion message. For an online survey, try the experience on a phone as well as a computer.

Make sure routing works correctly. If someone says they haven’t used a particular service, do they skip the relevant follow-up questions?

For telephone surveys, test the introduction and interviewer instructions. For paper surveys, check that the layout and return instructions are clear.

These details influence whether people can take part comfortably.

Measure How Long It Really Takes

The time needed to complete a questionnaire is difficult to judge when you already know every question.

Use the pilot to check your estimate. Allow for reading instructions, thinking about answers and writing comments.

If completion takes longer than expected, review which questions are essential. You may be able to remove repetition or simplify a section without losing useful information.

An accurate time estimate also helps you write an honest invitation. For more on respecting respondents’ time, read our guide to survey fatigue.

Review the Answers Before Launching

Once the pilot is complete, look at the responses as well as participants’ comments.

Are people leaving particular questions unanswered? Are open comments providing useful detail? Can you distinguish between different experiences in the way you intended?

Try a simple analysis. If the results don’t help answer your research question, revisit the questionnaire before collecting more data.

Be careful about combining pilot responses with the main results if you make substantial changes. Different wording or answer options can affect how people respond. Our guide to reliable survey results explains other checks to consider.

Give Yourself Time to Make Changes

A pilot is most useful when there’s time to act on what you learn.

Build it into your research plan, with space to revise the questionnaire and check any changes before launch.

At Viewpoint, we help organisations plan and deliver surveys that are clear, accessible and focused on useful outcomes. If you’re preparing your next research project, get in touch to discuss how we can support you.