Despite the time constraints, pilot testing is essential to your methodology for the following reasons:

• to find out how long the questionnaire takes to complete;

• to check that respondents understand and can follow the instructions on the questionnaire

(including filter questions);

• to ensure that all respondents understand the wording of individual questions in the same way and that there are no unclear or ambiguous questions;

• to ensure that you have the same understanding of the wording of individual questions as the respondents;
• to check that respondents have no problems in answering questions; for example:
• all possible answers are covered in list questions;
• whether there are any questions that respondents feel uneasy about answering;
• to discover whether there are any major topic omissions;
• to provide an idea of the validity of the questions that are being asked;
• to provide an idea of the reliability of the questions by checking responses from individual respondents to similar questions;
• to check that the layout appears clear and attractive;
• to provide limited test data so you can check that the proposed analyses will work.