What are the advantages and disadvantages of using open-ended questions? In general, do the advantages or disadvantages predominate?

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using open-ended questions? In general, do the advantages or disadvantages predominate?



Answer: The main advantage of open-ended question is that they can follow-up on things that arise during the interview that the researcher didn't think of in advance. The main disadvantage is that open-ended questions are very difficult to codify (i.e., boil down to simple data during pre-processing). This disadvantage is so great that open-ended questions are avoided (unless you're planning to write a pop- psych book, instead of publish in a journal).

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

JAD Advantages and Disadvantages

What is JAD and how are users involved? What are advantages and disadvantages of JAD?

According to Hero (1992), how are the three major theories of government compared in their ability to help explain the relative position of racial and ethnic groups in US politics? Do you agree that the theory of two-tiered pluralism is better than the other two in explaining the Latino (and other nonwhite) position in the post-1965 era?