Open-ended vs. close-ended questions in web questionnaires

A research of Open-ended vs. close-ended questions that focuses specifically on web questionnaires.

Important claims

• “Open-ended questions produce more missing data than close-ended” (page 159, Abstract)
• “More inadequate answers for open-ended question” (page 159, Abstract)
• “Open-ended questions should be more explicit in their wording” (page 159, Abstract)
• “An exaggerated use of multimedia and other advances in Web questionnaire technolog … increasing partial non-response” (page 160, Introduction)
• “Inadequate design (e.g. uninteresting, looking too complicated, etc.) may also prevent respondents from starting to answer the questionnaire at all” (page 160, Introduction)
• “Web questionnaires are often designed by people who lack methodological skills” (page 161, Introduction)
• “Especially in the case of attitudinal questions, the researcher has to be very explicit in trying to get more specific answers, since many respondents answer in very broad terms” (page 174, Discussion)
• “Another problem with the open-ended question occurred in relation to missing data: the amount of missing data (either non-valid responses or skipping of the question) was larger for the open-ended question.” (page 174, Discussion)

Reference

Ur\vsa Reja, Katja Lozar Manfreda, Valentina Hlebec, Vasja Vehovar “Open-ended vs. close-ended questions in web questionnaires” (2003)

@Article{reja2003,
  title = {Open-ended vs. close-ended questions in web questionnaires},
  author = {Reja, Ur\vsa and Manfreda, Katja Lozar and Hlebec, Valentina and Vehovar, Vasja},
  journal = {Developments in applied statistics},
  volume = {19},
  number = {1},
  pages = {159--177},
  year = {2003}
}