7 Reasons For Using Open-Ended Survey Questions?

Making the right choices between open-ended and closed survey questions, allows you to get only the data that best serves the goal of your customer, employee or market research survey.

You already know the difference between an open-ended question and a closed question, right?

Open-ended questions are the kind that don’t set specific options for response. For example, “What’s your reason for reading this blog post? Type your answer in the box below.”

Closed questions are the kind you can answer with one word or number, or by choosing from preset responses. For example, “How often do you visit this website? Once a day, once a week, once a month or once a year?”

The difference matters because when you’re designing a survey to collect feedback from customers or employees, the type of question you use influences the type of answers you get and the insights you can gain.

Let’s start by looking at when, how and why you’d want to use open-ended questions.

#1: Allow an infinite number of possible answers

The big plus of an open-ended question is that you’re not placing any limits on the response. That means your survey respondents can tell you anything they feel is relevant and anything they want you to know. Closed questions, on the other hand, drastically limit the possible responses.

#2: Collect more detail

Open-ended questions give your respondents the freedom and space to answer in as much detail as they like, too. Extra detail really helps to qualify and clarify their responses, yielding more accurate information and actionable insight for you.

#3: Learn something you didn’t expect

All this freedom to give any answer, of any length and with any level of detail, means that you’ll sometimes discover something completely unique and unexpected among your survey responses. Whether it’s a process innovation that’ll save the company money, or a marketing concept with the potential to boost your brand, these unanticipated answers can be extremely valuable.

#4: Get adequate answers to complex issues

Sometimes an open-ended question is the only way to collect the answers you need. In a situation that requires contextualisation, complex description and explanation, a simple Yes/No or multiple-choice answer just won’t cut it. When you’re asking someone to explain a decision or report a problem, for example, open-ended questions tend to work best.

#5: Encourage creative answers and self-expression

Given room to express themselves freely, some respondents will surprise you with their eloquence and creativity. An open-ended question frees respondents to convey their feedback and ideas to you in their own voices. You may also receive survey answers in unexpected formats, such as poetry, or a hyperlink to a blog post your respondent wrote on the topic in question.

#6: Understand how your respondents think

Free-form written answers reveal a great deal about the workings of the respondent’s mind. From the essential logic of their reasoning and the steps in their thinking process to their language choices and frame of reference, there’s a huge amount you can learn from reading their thoughts in their own words.

#7: Ask without knowing

The big problem with closed questions is that to design them into your survey, you’ll need to know roughly what answers you expect. If you’re testing a hypothesis, for example, it’s easy enough to come up with appropriate answer options that will support or refute it. But using open-ended questions lets you explore topics you don’t yet know enough about to form a hypothesis.