39 open-ended question examples and how to use them in research

In this guide, you'll get clear answers to what open-ended questions are, how to write them, and how to use them in research to uncover richer context, unexpected themes, and verbatim language you can act on.

We'll also cover open-ended questions vs. closed-ended questions, with concrete examples so you can choose the right questions for your research.

We finish with 35 copy-paste examples of open-ended questions that you can simply drop into your next survey.

What are open-ended questions?

Open-ended questions invite a free-text response in the respondent's own words rather than limiting them to predefined options. Think of questions that start with "Tell me…," "Describe…," "Why…," or "How…" – they unlock stories, not just selections.

The meaning of open-ended questions, put simply, is that they are designed to explore the why behind the what.

Open-ended questions vs closed-ended questions

When comparing open-ended questions and closed-ended questions, remember that closed formats (radio buttons, Likert scales, yes/no) are fast to answer, thanks to the predetermined answers possible, and easy to quantify than open-ended ones.

Open formats take longer to analyze but reveal qualitative data, nuance, edge cases, and the language customers actually use. If your team is debating closed vs open-ended questions, start with what you need from the data: is it measurement or discovery?

In other words, chosing closed-ended vs. open-ended questions is about what evidence you need now.

A quick summary:

• Use open-ended questions when you need to understand context, unmet needs, hypotheses, and a deeper understanding of your respondents' motivations.
• Use closed-ended questions when you need statistically comparable data, tracking metrics, demographic data, or segment splits at scale.

Open-ended questions are almost always qualitative and give insight into opinions, experiences, and motivations, while closed-ended questions are quantitative, providing numerical data.

Many studies blend open-ended questions and closed-ended questions within the same questionnaire to go deep and broad with the data. That balance is the essence of the best use of closed-ended vs. open-ended questions in applied research.

How to write open-ended questions

There's never a "wrong answer" to a survey question, there's just a question that leads to bias or a misunderstanding. Even then, it's a learning experience to improve your questions in a later survey. After all, writing survey questions is challenging – in a recent questionnaire we did of researchers, writing clear and unbiased questions was the biggest challenge in survey design.

Use this simple nine-step checklist to write impactful open-ended questions:

1. Start with the goal. Write down the decision your team needs to make, or the hypothesis you have. Next, ask yourself again: what open-ended questions would surface the data needed for that decision, or to answer that hypothesis?
2. Think about the structure of the question and answer. Start with "Tell me about…," "Walk me through…," "What happened when…," or "Why did you…?" These phrasings encourage sequence, cause, and effect answers that create a clear narrative.
3. Anchor your questions to specifics. "Tell me about the last time you evaluated vendors" yields better data than "What do you think about vendors?"
4. Avoid double-barrel questions. Don't ask "What is working and what needs improvement?" Split the question into two to avoid confused responses.
5. Remove biasing language. Replace "How much did you enjoy…" with "How did you feel about…?"
6. Set expectations. Add a brief note like "A sentence or two is great" to improve completion without cutting depth – this will make it much easier to parse the data later on. More detail isn't always the answer.
7. Consider where you'll have open questions. Position them early in your survey for discovery-heavy interviews, but later in a long survey so respondents aren't fatigued before multiple-choice grids
8. Plan coding upfront. Decide whether you'll use human coding, AI-assisted tagging, or a taxonomy. Knowing this shapes how you frame open-ended questions that map cleanly to the themes and narratives you're building with your data.
9. Test and trim. Pilo your suquestions with your colleagues. If two questions elicit a similar reponse, keep the stronger one.

For teams building repeatable programs, host your surveys on a market research platform like Checkbox, which makes it easy to mix question types, automate tagging and export insights. If you're operating in regulated environments, consider an on-premises deployment for compliance and data security. Request a Checkbox demo today.

Using open-ended questions in research

When thinking about open-ended questions in research, think about how to combine them effectively with your closed-ended questions so that they can expand and explain your quantitative signals. Here's how you can use them across different data-gathering methods:

Surveys

Add one to two open fields after critical modules. For example, after a Net Promoter Score item, ask "What is the primary reason for your score?"

The most common pattern for open-ended questions in surveys is that they explain the number shared in a closed-ended question. In the context of writing effective survey questions, this equates to context at scale – you have the numbers in the data to make assumptions, and the long-form responses to test those assumptions.

Here are some survey formats where you can use these questions:

Interviews and focus groups

Use open questions to follow surprising threads. "What else?" and "Can you give me an example?" are two great instigators for greater insight. You can also start the interview with rapport-building questions to put the interviewee and focus group at ease.

In conversation, asking open-ended questions help you get specific information, spot key differences in psychographic segments and understand the ideas people have behind their answers – not to mention that you can build rapport.

Usability tests

After tasks, prompt "What felt easy or confusing?" Qualitative feedback pinpoints friction you won't see in metrics alone.

These question help you interrogate pain points so you can deliver the best solution for your customers – not to mention getting more deals in your pipeline for similar buyer personas.

Longitudinal studies

Ask respondents to record their experiences over time to reveal triggers and routines you can design around.

By asking the same questions over time, you'll discover how motivations and habits develop – helping you begin to understand the instigating factors behind how people think.

In-product feedback prompts (feature or release-specific)

Ask customers what they think about a new feature after they've used it. If done in-app, instantly after a customer has experienced the product, these questions have multiple benefits, the main one being that the user's knowledge of the product is still fresh.

Advertising copy concept testing

Test sentiment and recall following an advertising campaign.

Data-wise, open responses are usually composed of unstructured text abnd rarely one-word answers. You'll typically:

1. Clean. Remove any personally identifiable information and fix obvious misspellings.
2. Categorize. Apply tags to themes (manually, semi-automatically, or with an LLM).
3. Quantify. Count themes, track shifts by segment, and pull verbatims as evidence.
4. Analyze. Now it's time to start gathering insights so you can accelerate the data-driven decision-making process

If you're tracking the voice of the customer, pair open-ended questions with a voice of the customer survey questions library so teams can compare reasons over time. This library will help you get better at composing questions and predicting responses, so you can start to expect specific answers over time.

When planning a study to better understand your audience, use proven quantitative market research survey questions alongside open qualitative questions to ensure you identify the decision drivers.

A frequent question is "are open-ended questions qualitative or quantitative?" The honest answer is that they're primarily qualitative, but once you identify recurring themes, open-ended questions become quantifiable. In practice, the most valuable data will use a blend of both.

39 open-ended question examples to use in your research

Below are a few examples of survey-ready questions organised by objective. Use them as open-ended questions in surveys or adapt them for interviews. They're written to avoid bias and invite respondents to provide more detail.

Product–market fit and adoption

1. Tell me about the moment you realised you needed a solution like this.
2. What problem were you trying to solve when you first tried our product?
3. How did you decide between the available options?
4. What almost stopped you from choosing us?
5. What would make you recommend us more often?

Open-ended sales questions

6. Walk me through what prompted you to start looking at solutions now.
7. What would have made you purchase at the end of our conversation?
8. Who else is involved in evaluating options?"
9. If we were meeting 6 months after implementation, what needs to be true for you to call this a win?"

Onboarding and first-use

10. Walk me through your first 10 minutes with the product.
11. What was confusing or unexpected during setup?
12. What helped you feel confident you'd set things up correctly?
13. What guidance or content was missing?

Usage, value, and outcomes

14. What are you able to do now that you couldn't before?
15. Which feature saves you the most time, and why?
16. Describe a recent win that the product made possible.
17. What tasks still feel clunky or slow?
18. If you could wave a magic wand, what would you change first in the product?

Churn and barriers

19. What caused you to consider cancelling or switching?
20. What could we have done earlier to prevent that?
21. What competitors did you look at, and why?
22. What would bring you back?

Pricing and packaging

23. How do you evaluate whether the price is fair?
24. Which plan feels right for your needs, and why?
25. What surprised you (good or bad) about our pricing page?

Support and service

26. Tell me about your last support interaction: What happened and how did it end?
27. What's one improvement that would make support feel effortless?

Brand, messaging, and positioning

28. What words would you use to describe us to a colleague?
29. What did you assume about us that turned out to be wrong?
30. What alternatives come to mind when you think about our category, and why?

Customer experience and journey

31. What part of the journey felt most painful?
32. What exceeded your expectations?
33. What almost made you drop off?

Competitive insights

34. When you think of [product category], who gets it right, and what do they do that stands out?
35. What emerging tools or trends are you watching?

Content, docs, and education

36. What topic would you love to see us explain more clearly?
37. What tutorial would have saved you time this week?

Final catch-alls

38. What did I not ask that I should have?
39. Is there anything else you want to share?

These examples of open-ended question work well in surveys, interviews, and questionnaires. They'll help you gather valuable information about your respondents.

To let people explain the reason behind their score, add one short open question – "Why?" – right after any important multiple-choice or rating question.

Practical tips for survey design and analysis

• Limit fatigue. Don't create one long open-ended questions survey. Instead, balance open and closed questions.
• Clarify what you want as an answer. A concise instruction like "Two sentences are perfect" helps.
• Placement matters. Put a general "What else should we know?" near the end to capture anything your structure missed.
• Work collaboratively. Involve product, customer-facing teams, and marketing to align on tags and definitions. This makes it easier to quantify research findings later.
• Use AI wisely. AI-assisted analysis accelerates categorization of open-ended questions in surveys, but keep humans in the loop to maintain accuracy and ethics.
• Close the loop. Share original quotes with the team and pair them with metrics to drive action.

Final thoughts

So, what's the purpose of open-ended questions? They reveal motivations, concerns, language, feelings, and edge cases that numbers alone don't.

Build on the examples of open-ended questions to develop surveys and interview scripts that help you better understand your customers, respondents, or population.

Mix open and closed questions to measure and explain, then analyze and categorize to identify recurring themes and understand the nuances of your data.

If you want an ideal solution that lets you create custom surveys and questionnaires, with all the open-ended question options you might need, consider demoing Checkbox.

Open-ended question FAQs