Pilot Studies & the Aims of Piloting (AQA AS Psychology)

Pilot studies

• Pilot studies are small-scale trials that are run to test some or all aspects of the proposed investigation

  • Milgram's (1963) study into obedience was originally intended to be a pilot study but in light of the findings it became the published study it is known today

• Pilot studies are a sort of 'dress rehearsal' of the procedure

  • They are conducted before the research to identify any issues which could arise and which could cause problems further down the line e.g.

    • flaws in the design of the procedure

    • ethical issues

    • feasibility issues

    • to test for reliability and validity (i.e. is the measure consistent and objective? Is the study testing what it set out to test?)

• Pilot studies enable the researcher to identify problems in the proposed study e.g.

  • if any problems are exposed by the pilot study the researcher then has the opportunity to fix them or to find suitable alternatives

    • If a repeated measures design would affect the validity of the findings then a matched pairs design could be proposed instead

    • If a lab experiment is unachievable to investigate a topic then a field experiment might be chosen instead

    • If the sample is difficult to generalise from then a more representative group of participants could be used instead

• There are also financial reasons for a pilot study

  • The findings of a pilot study can be used as evidence to obtain funding for the research

• If the researcher makes any alterations after conducting the pilot study they must then run another pilot study to test the new and improved procedure/measure

• Pilot studies can identify if it is worth the time, money and effort to run the proposed investigation i.e. is it likely to find significant results?