Research Tips

Open-Ended Questions in Web Surveys

People sometimes wonder whether respondents will take the time to provide a full and thoughtful answer to an open-ended question in a Web survey. In our experience, they do, particularly if the survey is about a subject that is important to them.

To further encourage full answers to open-ended questions, it’s worth considering programming the survey such that people can return to questions, even after they have completed the survey. While this needs to be balanced against other considerations, such as order effects, it enables respondents to think about the question before answering or to go back and add things that they think of later. If respondents do have the ability to revise responses or to complete some questions later, it’s a good idea to explicitly state this in the survey invitation or other instructions.

If you’re going to use an open-ended question on a Web survey, you may also want to read our previous tips on the use of open-ended questions, the location of open-ended questions within a survey, and formatting open-ended questions.