What is the goal of a pilot trial?

The goal of a pilot trial is to inform about the feasibility of a study before proceeding to a full-scale project. Pilot trials are typically smaller studies that test the methodology, procedures, and logistics of a research design. This helps researchers identify potential obstacles and make necessary adjustments to enhance the success of subsequent full-scale trials.

By conducting a pilot trial, researchers can assess various aspects such as recruitment processes, data collection techniques, and intervention protocols in a real-world setting. This preliminary research can reveal whether the proposed study design will generate meaningful data and help in refining research questions or hypotheses. The insights gained from a pilot trial ultimately contribute to ensuring that the full-scale study is realistic, practical, and likely to yield valid and reliable results.

The other options, while related to research, do not specifically capture the primary purpose of a pilot trial. Evaluating treatment effectiveness is often the goal of larger trials, providing a comprehensive literature review involves analyzing existing research rather than conducting a pilot study, and comparing outcomes from different studies is typically addressed in meta-analyses or systematic reviews rather than in pilot trials.