Open-Ended Question

An open-ended question is a type of question that researchers pose to research participants that allows them to select how they orient to the research topic. Also referred to as nondirective questions, open-ended questions provide participants of research interviews or written surveys with the opportunity to choose the terms with which to construct their descriptions and highlight the topics that are meaningful to them. The freedom on the part of research participants to elaborate on self-selected aspects related to the researcher's topic of examination in response to open-ended questions contrasts with the kind of responses called for by closed questions, which provide possible answers in the question and structure the format in which interviewees should respond. Open-ended questions make no presumptions about the kinds of answers participants might provide and are sometimes used as a way to develop the response options used in standardized survey formats.

The “grand tour” and “mini tour” questions outlined by the ethnographer James Spradley are good examples of open-ended questions, for example:

• Describe a typical day at work.
• Describe what you usually do when you encounter x at work.

One guideline for using open-ended interview questions is to begin with general questions and to request more detail from participants with probes. For example, a general question such as, “Tell me how you came to be doing y,” might be followed up with the probe, “You mentioned z; give me an example of that.” Participants' descriptions of their subjective states may also be elicited via probes: “You mentioned y; tell me what that was like for you.” A useful closing question in any qualitative interview is the open-ended question, “Is there anything we have not talked about that you would like to add?”

Although Spradley's use of open-ended questions is in the context of ethnographic interviews that examine questions about culture, open-ended questions may be used in a range of qualitative interview formats, including open-ended or in-depth individual interviews, group conversations and focus groups, and in (quantitative) questionnaires to elicit written data.

Interviewers must take care to pose open-ended questions purposefully, for if questions are too broad and the researcher has provided insufficient context for the research purpose, participants may not know how to respond, and lengthy clarification sequences may ensue. Another challenge faced by qualitative researchers lies in the analysis of data generated from open-ended questions. Since participants are free to respond to open-ended questions in whatever way they choose, data generated are likely to be wide-ranging in topic, complexity, and length.