• 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.