First thing there is no hard and fast rule to decide the number of sample to take in your pilot study.

Second thing generally it is considered to be around 10 percent of your effective sample size for your study as whole. like suppose if your sample size for your study comes out to be 400, then around 40 sample you can select for pilot study.

No, the sample selected for pilot study will not be included in your final study.

You cannot publish it, as it doesnt involve any scientific method of selection, the main work of pilot study is to check the validity and reliability of your tool i.e. questionnaire no doubt you can prepare a rough report to see that you are going in right direction or not.

I hope it helps.

Thanks

Pilot study is only for testing the validity or reliability of questionnaire. To me, It can be assessed through separate group of population and will be excluded when questionnaire validated. . . Pilot test normally assessed on 30 to 50 respondents but depends. Hence my observation is to pilot test on separate group and exclude the group from final analysis. However, you can mention about the screening process in research. 

In quantitative research in the field of social science, we generally do not apply any method to determine the size of a sample. In general, the sample size for pilot study lies between 30 to 50. Logic is that sample size should be always more than the number of items included in the questionnaire if there is no higher order construct.

No, for final research we have to collect the sample once again.

The results of a pilot study are tentative in nature. So, I feel it can be good for a conference, not for a journal article.

First thing there is no hard and fast rule to decide the number of sample to take in your pilot study.

Second thing generally it is considered to be around 10 percent of your effective sample size for your study as whole. like suppose if your sample size for your study comes out to be 400, then around 40 sample you can select for pilot study.

No, the sample selected for pilot study will not be included in your final study.

You cannot publish it, as it doesnt involve any scientific method of selection, the main work of pilot study is to check the validity and reliability of your tool i.e. questionnaire no doubt you can prepare a rough report to see that you are going in right direction or not.

I hope it helps.

Thanks

Pilot study is a small sized study which may be used before larger scale study of any type. it aims at testing procedures, steps, methodology ,,,, before begining the larger study to detect if its feasibility so you can detect obstacles remove difficulties and modify steps or protocol of study in order to save time, efforts and funding beside conducting a well designed study. it may be used in a future studyto calculate sample size although this has been argued

Pilot study usualy precede new intervention to detect its effect. may also be used before conducting exprimental studies

Sample size of pilot study is determined by patient flow, budget, time frame,,,,etc and doesn't need to be based on previous data so any size may be used based on these items

Data provided by pilot study is excluded from the following larger study as it is used to test methodology and steps of the study to modify protocol as needed so any difference in protocol even if minor may change the effect of the tested question. 

Indeed Results of pilot studies can be published separetly and sure you will refer that this is a pilot study. some journals does not welcome pilot studies.

When publishing the final study you may refer that it is based on the pilot study wether it has been published or not

I am in support of @Ravi Prakash Jha and @Ahmed Reda

Thank you all..need more insight and discourse with evidences!!

Pilot study 

Fink (2003b) as cited in Saunders et al., (2007) state that the minimum number for a pilot study is 10.

For the main study

Sekaran (2003) wrote:

Roscoe (1975) proposes the following rules of thumb for determining sample size:

1. Sample sizes larger than 30 and less than 500 are appropriate for most research.

2. Where samples are to be broken into subsamples; (male/females, juniors/

seniors, etc.), a minimum sample size of 30 for each category is necessary.

3. In multivariate research (including multiple regression analyses), the sample size should be several times (preferably 10 times or more) as large as the number of variables in the study.

4. For simple experimental research with tight experimental controls (matched pairs, etc.), successful research is possible with samples as small as 10 to 20 in size.

Reference

Sekaran, U., 2003. Research methods for business: A skill building approach. John Wiley & Sons.

Saunders, M.N., 2007. Research methods for business students, 5/e. Pearson Education India.

Check this article, it is simple and informative

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3081994/

Thank you all

It is about 10% of targeted population in the final researsh

Many thanks

Thank you all for the useful discourse

Very insightful discussion that brought much clarity to the topic.

Many thanks,

Many thanks

Good discussion

There is body of literature referring to "internal pilot studies", especially for sample size re-estimation, based on the premise that the sample selected for pilot study should be included in your final study. This assumes that your pilot study is an interim analysis for the final study. It depends on the reason the pilot study was performed; if the design is identical (or at least very similar), then not including the pilot study is a waste of resources.

Many thanks David!

Dear Sir,

I think the type of study you are going to conduct determine the sample size of pilot research. It depends whether you are going to conduct epidemiological or biochemical research such things influence your sample size.