Survey

Open-Ended versus Closed-Ended Questions

Open-ended questions require participants to formulate answers in their own words. Examples of such questions are “What is the main stressor in your life?” and “What do you think should be done to control crime in inner cities?” Space is typically provided for participants to write their answers. Although open-ended questions typically elicit more complete and deeper answers than closed-ended questions, they are much more difficult to analyze quantitatively. The answers need to be first coded into categories that are either predetermined or developed through content analysis of the obtained responses. The development of the scoring system and coding of individual answers should be performed by multiple “experts” who are knowledgeable in the subject field and trained to perform these tasks. High inter-rater agreement in coding responses is necessary to achieve [Page 1473]reliability of scoring. Compared with closed-ended questions, there is a higher risk of participants misunderstanding open-ended questions and providing irrelevant answers or choosing not to answer these questions. For these reasons, most survey questions are closed ended or only partially open ended.

Closed-ended questions list several response options from which the respondent needs to choose. For instance, the question “What is the main stressor in your life?” might be followed by these response categories:

—Finances

—Work

—Relationship with spouse

—Other relationships

—Children

Because closed-ended questions provide a limited number of specific responses, they are much easier to summarize and analyze. These answers are also more relevant and comparable than open-ended responses. However, the participant is forced to choose from alternatives that might not provide the most accurate answer. This problem is addressed in partially open-ended items that provide a set of closed-ended responses (as in closed-ended questions), as well as an open-ended option, such as

—Other (Specify):___________________

Types of Closed-Ended Questions

Depending on the format of the response categories, closed-ended questions might be dichotomous, nominal, ordinal, continuous, or rank ordered. Dichotomous questions offer only two possible answers (e.g., yes/no, true/false). Nominal questions include three or more response options that cannot be ordered. For example, the question on the main stressor given in the previous example is a nominal question. In contrast, ordinal items include three or more response categories that can be ordered on a continuum ranging from low to high levels. A set of such ordered responses is typically called a rating scale. Examples include the

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