Open ended question free response – UGC NET Question

An open-ended question invites respondents to express their thoughts, feelings or explanations in unrestricted form. It does not confine them to ticking boxes or choosing from a list of alternatives. This flexibility can reveal unexpected insights, nuances and rich qualitative data. Consequently, a question that permits free response in the respondent’s own words is termed an open-ended question.

Option A:
Open-ended questions are particularly useful in exploratory research where the range of possible answers is not known in advance. They encourage participants to elaborate and may generate ideas for subsequent structured items. These characteristics align closely with the description in the stem.

Option B:
Closed-ended questions provide a fixed set of response options, such as yes/no or multiple choices, which enhances ease of coding and analysis but restricts the form of responses. Since the stem emphasises answering in one’s own words without predefined categories, closed-ended is not the correct completion.

Option C:
Dichotomous questions are a specific type of closed-ended item offering only two alternatives, such as yes/no or agree/disagree. They allow no elaboration or free wording and thus do not match the open response feature mentioned.

Option D:
Multiple-choice questions present several predefined alternatives, from which respondents must choose one or more. While useful for objective scoring, they are not open in the sense of permitting respondents to use their own language, so multiple-choice is not appropriate here.