Pilot study Flashcards
Definition
A short version of the whole research that is used to test out the effectiveness of the research tools e.g sampling, methods.
Advantages
it saves resources and may even provide the researchers with opportunities to improve a larger, more scientific, and thus provide valid results.
Participants can give feedback which the researcher can assess their experiment and make the necessary changes. - By using open interviews for feedback one will be able to gain much more detailed feedback. However, if a questionnaire or closed interview was used then the participant may not be able to express their full feelings. Researcher can re-design problems.
Limitations
the research design for the study is a structured study. The structured study introduces biases into the results of the study to prove exactly what the researchers wanted to show. The sample of the subjects is not randomly selected and usually modified to favor the results that the researchers required.
Completing a pilot study successfully is not a guarantee of the success of the full-scale survey. Although pilot study findings may offer some indication of the likely size of the response rate in the main survey, they cannot guarantee this because they do not have a statistical foundation and are nearly always based on small numbers
Contaminates results when pilot participants are included in the main study, but new data are collected from these people.
Re-using participants
Sometimes participants that will not be part of the actual experiment are used in order to minimise order effects. The absence of order effects in the participants of the actual study will help to increase the reliability and validity of the results. If the same participants are used then this could decrease the reliability and validity, unless the experimenter has changed the layout of the study in response to the pilot study.
