What are open-ended questions designed to do?

Open-ended questions are specifically designed to allow respondents to express their thoughts, feelings, and insights in their own words without being constrained by predetermined options. This type of question encourages deeper responses and provides rich qualitative data that can reveal the complexity of respondents' viewpoints. By enabling individuals to articulate their answers freely, open-ended questions can uncover nuances and details that closed-ended questions might miss, facilitating a more profound understanding of the subject at hand.

For example, in market research, asking consumers how they feel about a product in an open-ended format can yield diverse perspectives, enabling marketers to identify specific likes, dislikes, or suggestions directly from the target audience. Such information can be invaluable for improving products or services based on actual customer feedback.