The Beacon Foundation Pre-program survey was devised as part of the Beacon Foundation Evaluation program. The pre-program survey captured student profiles starting in 2008. The final surveys were completed in 2013 for the 2014 cohort.

The Beacon foundation Pre-Program Survey began as a paper-based survey in 2008, with the paper survey forms being destroyed after data was captured into Excel speadsheets. In 2010, administration of the survey changed to an online delivery mechanism (Survey Monkey). Under this delivery mechanism, raw data is stored in Survey Monkey under a variety of non-standardised titles, with extracted (aggregate and analysis) data maintained in Excel speadsheets. These Excel spreadsheets have been stored on the computer hard drives of individual Beacon staff, prior to being transferred into Microsoft SharePoint.

The Pre-Program Survey and Post-Program Survey produce related datasets, each consisting of responses to the same set of survey questions applied to students at Beacon participant school at two different timepoints. These questions have evolved and changed throughout the life of the survey and as such do not constitute a pure longitudinal study outside of each cohort comparison. Of the two surveys, the Pre-Program Survey produces the larger raw dataset, as it is completed by all Year 9 students in schools offering the Beacon program, whereas the Post-Program Survey is only administered to those students who have completed a pre-program survey in Year 9 and gone on to complete the Beacon program during their Year 10 school year.

The questionnaire is completed by each student individually and surveys a number of demographic factors (such as gender, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander identification, and language spoken in the home), as well as students' aspirations and expectations about their future.

The data collected for each school in the Pre-Program study is shared with that school to inform selection of appropriate content from the Beacon suite for their program implementation in the coming year. Together, the two datasets are used to extrapolate measures of change across individuals and aggregate change across transition factors.

The final pre-program survey data was collected in 2013, for the 2014 cohort.