Hurried Child Syndrome Among Children and Adolescents: A Pilot Study to Calculate Sample Size

The term ‘pilot study’ refers to mini version of a full-scale study. These mini version studies are one of the crucial elements of a research design and are used for many purposes, to fulfil various objectives. The main cause behind conducting any pilot trial is to calculate the sample size for finding the prevalence of particular variable(s) in research and to remove all the weaknesses which can be faced while conducting the final study. This study was carried out to calculate the prevalence of ‘Hurried child syndrome’ in the Indian scenario. Based on that prevalence, final sample size for the main research was calculated. Results: The prevalence of ‘Hurried child syndrome’ was 87.5% in the pilot study and calculated sample size was 559. Conclusion: Sample size was calculated accurately with the help of a pilot study. It also facilitated the investigators to handle the shortcomings and modify the research protocol accordingly in advance.