We strongly recommend running a pilot study before launching your main study. A pilot lets you test your study with a small number of participants and identify issues before collecting your full dataset.
This is especially useful if you have not run a similar study before.
What is a pilot study for?
A pilot study helps you confirm that your study works as expected.
You can use it to:
Confirm that all technical elements are working correctly
Check that instructions, tasks, and estimated completion time are clear
Understand the types of responses participants give
Assess whether the data is complete and fit for purpose (e.g. whether it helps answer your research question)
How many participants should I include?
Run your pilot with a small number of participants compared to your full study.
For many studies, this may be around 5–10 participants.
For more complex studies, you may want to start with fewer participants.
How closely should a pilot match the main study?
Your pilot should replicate the study flow as closely as possible.
This helps ensure the full study runs as expected and lets you identify issues with the overall experience.
How to run a pilot study on Prolific
Set up your survey or experiment on your chosen external platform
Create a new study on Prolific
Set the number of places to a small sample size
Publish your study
You may want to tell participants in your study description that this is a pilot study. This can help set expectations and encourage useful feedback.
If you want more detailed feedback, you can use prescreeners such as approval rate and number of previous submissions to recruit experienced participants.
What should I check during a pilot?
When reviewing your pilot, check:
Whether participants complete the study successfully
Whether instructions and tasks are followed as expected
Whether completion times match your estimate
Whether the data collected is complete and usable for your research purpose
Use these checks to confirm that your study runs as expected, instructions are clear, timing is accurate, and the data collected is suitable for your research before launching your main study.
What should I do after the pilot?
After reviewing your pilot results and making any changes, you can launch your main study.
You can do this by either:
Duplicating your pilot study and excluding pilot participants, or
Increasing the number of places on your existing study to continue data collection
Using pilot data
How you use pilot data depends on your study.
Including pilot data in your final dataset may affect consistency if you make changes after the pilot
Excluding pilot data may result in a smaller final sample but ensures all data is collected under the same conditions
Consider this when deciding how to use your pilot results.