Open Questions: Definition, Advantages & Disadvantages

When designing a questionnaire for a standardized survey, specific question types are used primarily for content reasons. If researchers cannot precisely assess what answers to expect from respondents in the research area being studied, they must work with open questions.

General Definition of Open Questions

With open questions, respondents are not given answer categories in contrast to closed questions, unlike closed questions. Instead of choosing an answer from existing options, they can express themselves as they wish and in their usual way of speaking within the given framework. Most often, respondents must enter their answer themselves in a field provided for that purpose.

Open questions are primarily used to explore detailed reasons for a certain behavior. Sometimes, however, it is also formal conditions or the visual design of the questionnaire that justify the use of open questions. If there are too many known answer options (e.g., for age or the federal state of the respondents), whose listing would simply be too long, an open question (e.g., "Please enter your age here:_________") is quite sensible.

Typical Use of Open Questions

Open questions are particularly effective in exploratory preliminary studies because they can provide good insights into unexplored subject areas. Overall, they have some advantages but many disadvantages, especially regarding practical feasibility.

Advantages of open questions:

• Wide range of content from answers can be captured
• Content distortions caused by predefined answer options in closed questions can be avoided
• Individual language can be taken into account

Disadvantages of open questions:

• Results depend on respondents' eloquence
• Expensive evaluation through subsequent categorization of answers
• High time expenditure leads to low motivation when completing
• Answers can be imprecise and are not always interpretable

Due to the enormous effort in data evaluation, open questions are rather an exception in standardized surveys. In most cases, researchers work with closed questions, which are easier to evaluate. In practice, semi-open questions are also frequently encountered. Here, an additional open answer category is appended to the closed question (e.g., "Other:______"), if respondents cannot find a suitable answer in the provided categories.