# Mirubiki Blog

Notes on questionnaire quality, synthetic respondents and what a pretest can prove. Written for US research teams.

## Articles

- [The three defects a pretest catches before you field](https://www.mirubiki.com/us/blog/2026-10-10-three-defects-a-pretest-catches) (2026-10-10) : Item wording, scale collapse and segment breakage are cheaper to find before the field than after. What a pretest actually looks for.
- [What a synthetic panel cannot tell you](https://www.mirubiki.com/us/blog/2026-09-24-what-a-synthetic-panel-cannot-tell-you) (2026-09-24) : A synthetic panel is not a cheap sample. Four questions it cannot answer, and why the honest output is an abstention rather than a number.
- [Writing Likert items that survive a pretest](https://www.mirubiki.com/us/blog/2026-09-05-likert-items-that-survive-a-pretest) (2026-09-05) : Five rules for agreement scales: one dimension per item, a true midpoint, a labelled scale, no negation, and a reversal test before you field.