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    Open-Ended Question

    An open-ended question allows respondents to answer in their own words with free-text input rather than choosing from pre-defined options.

    Open-ended questions generate qualitative insight but slow analysis. Best practice: ask one open-ended question per survey, placed after key closed-ended questions to avoid biasing them. AI-powered analysis (sentiment, theme extraction, summarization) makes large-scale open-text analysis tractable.

    Example

    'What's the one thing we could do to improve?' is a classic post-NPS open-ended follow-up.

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    Related terms

    Closed-Ended Question

    A closed-ended question presents respondents with a fixed set of answer choices to select from.

    Ranking Question

    A ranking question asks respondents to order a set of items by preference, importance, or priority, producing ordinal data on relative preference.

    Matrix Question

    A matrix question (or grid question) displays multiple sub-questions sharing the same response scale in a table, letting respondents rate many items efficiently.

    Demographic Question

    Demographic questions collect background information about respondents (age, gender, role, company size, region) to enable segmentation and weighting.

    Branching Logic

    Branching logic (conditional logic) routes respondents to different follow-up questions based on their previous answers, creating personalized survey paths.

    Skip Logic

    Skip logic is a form of branching that omits irrelevant questions for a respondent based on previous answers, shortening survey length and improving completion.