Open-Ended vs Closed-Ended Questions: When to Use Each (With Examples)

"What's the main reason for your score?", "What three words come to mind when you think of our brand?" and "What, if anything, was confusing about this page?" are all open ended question examples.

Are open ended questions qualitative or quantitative?

The raw answers are qualitative text. Once you code them into themes, you can count how often each theme appears, which turns them into quantitative data you can chart.

How many open ended questions should a survey have?

MindProbe recommends one or two in a typical 10 to 15 question quantitative survey, and more in pilots or discovery work.

Which survey question types are closed-ended?

Yes/no, multiple choice, rating, Likert, ranking and matrix questions are all closed-ended survey question types.

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References

1. Asare-Marfo, D. (2021). Why do some open-ended survey questions result in higher item nonresponse rates than others? Pew Research Center, Decoded, 14 October 2021.
2. Schuman, H. and Presser, S. (1979). The open and closed question. American Sociological Review, 44(5), 692 to 712.
3. Singer, E. and Couper, M. P. (2017). Some methodological uses of responses to open questions and other verbatim comments in quantitative surveys. methods, data, analyses, 11(2), 115 to 134.
4. Smyth, J. D., Dillman, D. A., Christian, L. M. and McBride, M. (2009). Open-ended questions in web surveys: Can increasing the size of answer boxes and providing extra verbal instructions improve response quality? Public Opinion Quarterly, 73(2), 325 to 337.
5. Züll, C. (2016). Open-Ended Questions. GESIS Survey Guidelines. Mannheim: GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences.