Arpita - the simple answer is 'no'. Feasibility tests (validity and reliability) are more reserved for specific quantitative approaches. Qualitative interviews are designed to be 'unique'. Their individual nature and outcome is unknown - and the semi-structured guide is just that; a tentative guide. The intention is not replicability. You may be thinking more of a 'pilot' as putting your interview guide to a panel of experts/participants for 'member-checking'. This is more a 'face validity' process though - and not a feasibility test.

Dr Arpita, pilot studies in research - whether quantitative or qualitative - give us an insight about the appropriateness of the instrument (or set of semi-structured questions in your case) for the target sample. Some or most of the questions may or may not elicit any responses or "don't know" type of responses - then the very purpose of your instrument fails or the target sample is not suitable for this kind of survey. In my opinion, pilot study is needed to weed out trivial or insignificant questions and with the feedback that you get, new questions may enter or some questions may get reshaped.

Arpita - the simple answer is 'no'. Feasibility tests (validity and reliability) are more reserved for specific quantitative approaches. Qualitative interviews are designed to be 'unique'. Their individual nature and outcome is unknown - and the semi-structured guide is just that; a tentative guide. The intention is not replicability. You may be thinking more of a 'pilot' as putting your interview guide to a panel of experts/participants for 'member-checking'. This is more a 'face validity' process though - and not a feasibility test.

There are several useful functions for a pilot study in qualitative research. First, it is useful if you don't know much about the field you are studying. In this particular case, doing a pilot study in form of unstructured observations and interviews helps you to understand your field and to formulate your research question as well as your interview guide. Second, you can do a pilot study in the sense you asked, i.e., to test your interview guide. My dictionary defines feasibility as "the state or degree of being easily or conveniently done". In this sense, a feasibility study can test:

- whether your interviewees understand your questions and can answer them,

- the time it takes interviewees to answer your questions (do you manage to get all your questions answered in the time available for interviews?), and

- the informational yield of your questions (do you get all the information you need to answer your research question?).

In qualitative research there are different ways to approach this 'pilot study'. If you have only few key interviewees for your study and don't want to 'waste' an untested interview guide on them, you may try an interviewee in a similar position but outside the scope of your study (i.e., a manager from a different organisation). This would be a 'true' pilot study in the sense the interview not contributing to your main study. If you have enough potential interviewees, you can simply use the first interviews to adapt your interview guide. If the first version doesn't work at all, you end up with a 'true' pilot study again because you cannot use the information from the interview. The most common case, however, is that you start with your interview guide, notice things not going so well with some questions, and stepwise adjusting your interview guide. This is perfectly okay because, as Dean pointed out, qualitative interviews are unique anyway.

I think it is helpful to think of the first one or two interviews being open to change. In particular, if you learn that you need to improve the questions you had originally planned to ask, then by all means do so.

I always tell my students that if there initial interviews work, then they have data, but if not, then they did a pilot.

If you don't know much about the problem you are studying, the pilot study (observation, unstructured interviews) is very useful. It helps you to improve the questions, get to know your respondents/research partners better...

Another option is to consult "key informants" from your target set of participants to get their advice about how to word questions, and especially what would a good question to start the interview.

In qualitative research, preparation for collecting data is very critical and demands "… conducting a pilot study" (Yin, 2009, p. 67). Conducting the pilot study increases the likelihood of success of the actual study, and uncovers the local problems affecting the conduction of the actual study (van Teijlingen & Hundley, 2004). The results of the pilot study lead to refining, reformulating and/or reorganizing the semi-structured questions along with the research inquiries. Further, they help in identifying the importance of including another technique/tool of 'data collection (such as class/institution observations)', to obtain a closer understanding of the issues under investigation and to compare what is said to what is seen. Put differently, the pilot study might lead to the triangulation of data sources, and the possibility of including and/or excluding different types of interviewees).

For piloting your interview questions, it is valuable to interview participants with qualities similar to those participants you have decided upon for the actual study. For example, if your study is about some school teachers or managers, you can then pilot the interview questions with teachers/managers from another school within the same research setting. In some cases, you can use the first two or three interviews as a source of a pilot study.

Hope this helps!

Best wishes!

I would say, if fund and time allow; piloting should be conducted particularly in case of qualitative study to include all targeted/local indicators and to capture behavioral aspects before actual study.

That is a very nice question. As to my actual experience, the instruments stability, confirmability, accuracy, truthfulness, credibility and usefulness should be tested by taking a typical case in point before the actual data collection and thereby revise the instruments as per the experiences gained in the process. This step is a very crucial step in making the qualitative research near to scientific rigors!!!

Hi Arpita,

Pilot test in qualitative research is not really mandatory if you are well aware about the problem and it's answer. If such situation is there then why qualitative research directly jump to quantitative research.

In case, your research is exploratory and searching solutions to the concerned problem, then first few interviews can be used as pilot test for better understanding of relevant questions about your problem and related answers. These pilot interviews can also be used in the main research analysis too.

Though the pilot study is not necessary for qualitative research; however, conducting the pilot study will help you correct or improve your research approach and enhance the chances for attaining precise outcome.

The only circumstance in which I would NOT do a pilot study would be if I was absolutely sure of the validity and reliability of the survey instrument based on prior work -- for example when my team applies the global "Household Water Insecurity Experiences" survey in a new location we don't usually pilot because the instrument has already been successfully used in more than three dozen similar locations and there is excellent peer-reviewed literature demonstrating validity and reliability. On the other hand, if we thought that there was something unique or distinctive about the new study location, then we would go ahead and pilot the survey anyway.

In ALL other circumstances we would ALWAYS pilot beforehand.

Hope this helps.

The guidance/discussions (see some more recommended publications) as per the following papers/link may further help:

• Sampson, H. (204) Navigating the waves: the usefulness of a pilot in qualitative research, Qualitative Research, 4, 3, pp. 383-402.
• Williams-McBean, C. T. (2019) The Value of a Qualitative Pilot Study in a Multi-Phase Mixed Methods Research, The Qualitative Report, 24, 5, pp. 1055-1064.
• How many interviews are needed for a pilot study in a qualitative research approach?: https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_many_interviews_are_needed_for_a_pilot_study_in_a_qualitative_research_approach

My response is it "depends." It depends on the rationale for the study, and what will be done with the analysis of the data. Pilot studies are very useful, I think, in the early stages of research. They help to define parameters, and give clues to data analysis possibilities. Do all studies require a pilot? No, but it depends.

Do you mean a combination of qualitative and quanittative questions ? where you have closed and open-ended questions? If so the quanitative part can go through a cronbach's alpha test. The qualitative part can be triangulated for a credibility and trustworthiness test.

In qualitative research you would call this a pre-test rather than a pilot study (which would imply quantitative data). It is always goo to test your questions to receive feedback about the nature and 'success' of the way the question is asked and whether it will elicit the kind of narrative that you are looking for. The feedback would be used reflexively to adjust the question for your study...