The Swiss PILOT ISSP 2017 SOCIAL NETWORKS survey is the pretest survey of the 2017 version of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP; http://www.issp.org) about ‘Social Networks’ realized in Switzerland. The survey focuses on social resources and support, contact frequency with family and friends and diversity and hierarchy of personal network. Issues such as access and mobilization of social relations, perception and justification of social inequalities, perceived integration, norms of obligation and reciprocity and social strain are also covered. This pilot has been realized in Switzerland, Germany, China, Venezuela, Taiwan, Turkey and the Unites States of America with the scope to pretest and finalize the questionnaire for the main survey in 2017. In Switzerland, the pilot has surveyed just over a thousand residents, between the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016 through a paper questionnaire. The main ISSP survey is conducted every year in more than 40 countries over the world. Every edition of the ISSP covers a specific theme, which is repeated at a regular interval. In Switzerland, the ISSP modules are included in the MOSAiCH survey (Measurement and Observation of Social Attitudes in Switzerland; http://forscenter.ch/en/our-surveys/international-surveys/mosaich-issp-2/). The “ISSP 2017 Social Networks III” module will be integrated in the MOSAiCH 2017 survey along with the ISSP 2016 module ‘Role of Government’ to be fielded in spring/summer 2017 with a representative sample of the resident Swiss population. Most questions of the present pilot survey will be fielded identically or slightly amended in the main survey in 2017 in all ISSP countries.