What are the advantages and disadvantages of using open-ended versus closed-ended questions in a survey?

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Survey questions can be either open-ended or closed-ended, depending on how you want to collect and analyze the responses. Open-ended questions allow respondents to express their opinions, feelings, or experiences in their own words, while closed-ended questions offer predefined choices or scales to select from. Both types of questions have their advantages and disadvantages, depending on the purpose, design, and implementation of your survey. In this article, you will learn about the pros and cons of using open-ended versus closed-ended questions in a survey, and how to decide which one is best for your research question.

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1 Open-ended questions

Open-ended questions are questions that do not have a fixed set of answers or options, often beginning with words like "why", "how", "what", or "describe". For example, "Why did you choose this product?" or "How do you feel about our service?". These types of questions can be beneficial for exploring the reasons, motivations, preferences, or experiences of your respondents, as well as generating new ideas, insights, or feedback that you may not have anticipated. Advantages of open-ended questions include capturing the richness and diversity of responses, revealing unexpected findings, allowing respondents to express themselves freely and authentically, and reducing the bias or influence of the researcher or the questionnaire. However, they can also be time-consuming and difficult to answer, require more effort and motivation from the respondents, be challenging and costly to code, analyze, and interpret, and produce low-quality or irrelevant data if the questions are vague, ambiguous, or too broad.

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Andrew Edwards

Research/survey expert for Marketing, PR & Brand campaigns - internal and external | Results appear in top tier media (WSJ, Forbes) & prominent trade shows (CES, AWS re:INVENT)
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1. Open-ended questions bring tremendous value to a survey. You can gather exact quotes from your respondents – many of them – allowing you to gather strong and valuable insights. However, there are many drawbacks. Open-ended questions not written properly can lead respondents to be confused. Also attempting to put these into categories/sections and can be entirely up to the perspective of the researcher. Another challenge is if you interview 1,000 respondents, you technically can have 1,000 different answers. That is a significant undertaking to analyze.

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Lee Ferrante, M.A.

I/O Psychology Practitioner
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Inattentive or unmotivated respondents may provide irrelevant responses that make it more difficult to identify common themes across the thoughtful and genuine responses.

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Ankesh Saxena

30x Top Voices | Podcaster @ The Collaborative Canvas | Founder - TRP Magazine | Learn and Grow | Market Research | Personal Branding | Consumer Insights | Sales | ESOMAR member | MRSI Member |
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Open-ended questions in surveys allow for detailed, qualitative insights and uncover unanticipated responses but can be time-consuming to analyze. Closed-ended questions are easier to quantify and compare, providing clear, structured data, but they may limit respondent expression and overlook nuanced opinions. Balancing both types can yield comprehensive results, leveraging the depth of open-ended responses and the efficiency of closed-ended data.

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2 Closed-ended questions

Closed-ended questions are questions that have a fixed set of answers or options, such as a list, a scale, a yes/no, or a true/false option. For example, "Which of these products have you used in the past month?" or "How satisfied are you with our service on a scale of 1 to 5?". They can help measure the frequency, intensity, or degree of a phenomenon and provide quantitative and standardized data that can be easily compared, aggregated, or summarized. However, they can limit the range and depth of responses, miss important nuanced information not captured by the options, introduce bias or influence of the researcher or questionnaire, and reduce engagement and interest of the respondents. Some advantages of closed-ended questions include being quick and easy to answer, reducing cognitive load and confusion of respondents, facilitating data collection and analysis process, and producing reliable and valid data if questions are well-designed and tested.

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Andrew Edwards

Research/survey expert for Marketing, PR & Brand campaigns - internal and external | Results appear in top tier media (WSJ, Forbes) & prominent trade shows (CES, AWS re:INVENT)
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When written well, closed questions can compile an abundant amount of data. These are multiple choice, grid, ranking, statements and more. Try to avoid being too "simple" - for example asking a question with answers like "yes/no" or "true/false". These are too simple and don't give you much data. Every question in every survey should be treated with high importance so using grid, ranking, statements should have a high priority.

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3 How to choose between open-ended and closed-ended questions

When deciding whether to use open-ended or closed-ended questions in your survey, several factors should be taken into account, such as the research question and objectives, the target population and sample size, the mode and format of the survey, the resources and time available, and the data analysis and reporting plan. Generally speaking, open-ended questions are more suitable for exploratory or qualitative research, while closed-ended questions are more suitable for descriptive or quantitative research. However, a combination of both types of questions can be used to achieve a balance between breadth and depth, or to triangulate or validate findings. Thus, it is essential to align your questions with your research purpose and to test and refine them before launching your survey.

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4 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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What are the advantages and disadvantages of using open-ended versus closed-ended questions in a survey?

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1 Open-ended questions

2 Closed-ended questions

3 How to choose between open-ended and closed-ended questions

4 Here’s what else to consider

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