Open-ended questions empower participants to compose their personalized responses. Some people will opt out of responding to an open-ended question because they are generally more difficult to answer than a closed-ended question. With that in mind, you should use them when you are less concerned about the number of answers that you get. There are many pros and cons of open-ended questions:
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Permits an inexhaustible range of potential answers | Varying levels of detail in different respondents’ answers |
| Allow participants to answer in detail and qualify or clarify responses | Answers may be difficult to compare or analyze |
| Provides room for detailed responses and any necessary clarifications | Respondents may not answer in the way you intended if a question is overly general |
| Reveal more about a respondent’s reasoning, chain of thought, and basis of reference | Answers require a considerable commitment of time, thought, and effort |
Open-ended questions don’t always have to be answered with longer paragraphs or thoughtful answers. If you are looking for more quantifiable data, you can still use an open-ended format by asking questions that would be answered using numbers.
For Example…
In this digital age, we often find ourselves looking at a screen either for work, entertainment, or learning about research methods online. People have started regulating their screen times and having designated no screen time during their days. If you want to ask a question about their efforts to reduce screen time, the question could be:
On an average day, about how many hours do you consciously avoid any screens for? Enter a number of hours (if none, enter zero).
Even though the answer to this question is numerical (a common feature of quantitative data or closed-ended questions), it is still an example of an open-ended question because it doesn’t provide a set range of responses.
