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GMH REWA (M.P.)

SUBJECT – NURSING EDUCATION

ASSIGNMENT ON -
STANDARDIZED & NON-STANDARDIZED TESTS

SUBMITTED TO SUBMITTED BY
MRS. REKHA SINGH MRS. MADHURI SAHU
NURSING TUTOR [Link]. NURSING
GMH REWA PREVIOUS YEAR

SUBMISSION DATE-24/01/2022
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OPEN ENDED & CLOSE ENDED QUESTIONS

OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS

INTRODUCTION
There are many different kinds of test questions, from multiple choice to short answer. Open-
ended questions require that you answer in your own words, and your success depends on a few
simple elements.

Open-ended questions are usually seen as opposed to closed questions. The closed question
might be a knowledge question which requests basic, limited, factual information, having a
correct answer that is incorporated in a list of alternatives that is presented to the respondent. It
might also refer to an attitude question for which there is no correct answer. The open-ended
questions must be closed in the analysis process, this is the informational paradigm. To do this
some action is required.

DEFINITION

Open-ended questions are free-form survey questions that allow respondents to answer in open

text format so that they can answer based on their complete knowledge, feeling, and
understanding. It means that the response to this question is not limited to a set of options.

THREE TYPES OF OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS ARE DISTINGUISHED:

1. The technically open-ended question;

2. The apparent open-ended question;

3. The really open-ended question.

The technically open open-ended question is found when the user has to fill in some digits or
letters having a specific meaning. This type is among others found when the year of birth is
asked for. Here four or the last two digits have to be filled in

An example is:-

“Which newspaper do you read at home?”

This type of question is used for all questions that have answers that fit in a list:

 Religious affiliation,
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 Ethnic background,
 Language spoken at home,
 Magazines

The answers to open-ended questions will usually be descriptive. Respondents will present
listings, will demonstrate knowledge, or will present an explanation or a motivation.

Examples of Open Ended Questions

1. How can we improve your experience?

2. Do you have any comments or suggestions?
3. What would you like to see differently in our product or service?
4. What are the challenges you have faced while using our product or service?
5. How can we help you to grow your business?
6. How can we help you to perform better?
7. What did you like/dislike most about the event?
8. Interview open-ended question: How do you plan to use your existing skills to improve
organizational growth, if hired?
9. Customer-facing open-ended question: Please describe a scenario where our online
marketplace helps you make day-to-day purchases.
10. Technical open-ended question: Can you please explain the back-end Javascript code
template used for this webpage?
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WHY USE OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS?

1. No limits on the answers: Happy or unhappy, the customers need a platform to voice their
opinions. As answer options for open-ended questions aren’t provided, the respondent
has the liberty to include details about feelings, attitudes, and views that they usually
wouldn’t get to submit in close-ended questions.
2. Medium for respondents to answer creatively: These questions are more appreciative of
the respondents than close-ended questions as users aren’t expected to just “fill” them out
for the sake of it.
3. Respondents may stun you with the vision and creativity they show with their answers.
Links to their blogs or a verse or two of their poetry will leave you spellbound.
4. Expect the unexpected: If there are only close-ended questions in a survey, the users
usually get disconnected and fill it out without giving it much thought. With the kind of
freedom that open-ended questions offer, users can respond the way they’d like to, be it
the number of words or the details or the tone of the message.
5. These responses may be marketing tips for improving the branding of the organization or
some creative ideas that can lead to monetary gains.
6. Get answers to complicated situations: Knotty situations need feedback that is more than
just a mere Yes/No. Single-select or Multi-select questions cannot do justice to the detail
or scrutiny required for some critical and complex situations.
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7. Open-ended questions work best in situations where the respondents are expected to
explain their feedback or describe the troubles they’re facing with the products.
8. Understand your clientele better: You can learn from your respondents. The open-ended
questions offer the freedom to these respondents to be vocal about their opinion that
would be insightful for organizations.
9. Respondent logic, thoughts, language, and reference choices can be known from these
questions that can reveal a lot about how the respondent’s brain functions.

HOW TO ASK AN OPEN-ENDED QUESTION?

Everything easy or complicated requires competence. Asking the right question is also one such
thing that requires capabilities. Capability to understand and segment the target audience,
determine the kind of questions that will work well with that audience, and determine the
efficiency of open-ended questions.

Here are four ways to create effective open-ended questions:

1. Understand the difference between open-ended questions and closed-ended

questions: 

Before you start putting questions to paper, you need to have absolute clarity on open-
ended vs closed-ended questions. Your objective of sending out an online survey should
be clear, and based on that, you can evaluate the kind of questions you would want to use.
These are usually used where the feelings and feedback of the customer are highly
valued. To receive 100% transparent feedback on these questions, make sure that you
don’t lead the respondents with your questions and give them complete liberty to fill in
whatever they want.

2. Create a list of open-ended questions before curating the survey: 

Once you get clarity on what are open-ended questions and how to implement them,
figure out a list of survey questions that you’d want to use. First, you can have a fair
share of open-ended questions in your survey, and this number can fluctuate depending
on the responses you receive.
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Examples of open-ended questions

o Why do you think competitive market research is important before launching a

new business?
o How do you think you’ll overcome these obstacles in our project?
o Tell us about your experience with our onboarding process.
o What are your professional priorities at the moment?
o What domain of work motivates you?
o You can make a list of similar questions before you start executing the survey.

3. Reconstruct any question into an open-ended question:

Observation is the key here. Observe what kind of questions do you usually ask your customers,
prospects, and every other person you come across. Analyze whether your questions are closed-
ended or open-ended. Try and convert those closed-ended questions into open-end ones
wherever you think the latter would fetch you better results and valuable insights.

4. Follow up a closed-ended question with an open-ended question:

This trick works wonders. It’s not always possible to convert a closed question into an open one,
but you can follow up by getting an open-ended question answered.

For example, if you have a closed question like – “Do you think the product was efficient?” with
the options “Yes” and “No”, you can follow it up with an open question like “How do you think
we can make the product better?”

HOW TO ADD OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS?

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1. Goto: Login » Surveys » Edit » Workspace

2. Click on the Add Question button to add a question.

3. Select Basic, then go to the Text section and select Comment Box.

4. Enter the question text.

5. Select the data type: Single Row Text, Multiple Rows Text, Email address, or Numeric Data. .

[Link] the Text Box Location (below or next to question text). Enabling “next to question text”
will put the text box to the right of the question
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ADVANTAGES OF OPEN ENDED QUESTIONS

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DISADVANTAGES OF OPEN ENDED QUESTIONS

CLOSE ENDED QUESTIONS

DEFINITION

 Close ended questions are defined as question types that ask respondents to choose from
a distinct set of pre-defined responses, such as “yes/no” or among set multiple choice
questions. In a typical scenario, closed-ended questions are used to gather quantitative
data from respondents.
 Closed-ended questions come in a multitude of forms but are defined by their need to
have explicit options for a respondent to select from.

However, one should opt for the most applicable question type on a case-by-case basis,
depending on the objective of the survey. To understand more about the close ended questions,
let us first know its types.
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TYPES OF CLOSE ENDED QUESTIONS

 Dichotomous Question

These close ended question are indicative questions that can be answered either in one of the two
ways, “yes” or “no” or “true” or “false”.

 Multiple choice question

A multiple choice close ended questions are easy and flexible and helps the researcher obtain
data that is clean and easy to analyse. It typically consists of stem - the question, correct answer,
closest alternative and distractors.

Types of Multiple Choice Questions

1. Likert Scale Multiple Choice Questions

These closed ended questions, typically are 5 pointer or above scale questions where the
respondent is required to complete the questionnaire that needs them to indicate the extent to
which they agree or disagree.
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2. Rating Scale Multiple Choice Questions

These close ended questions require the respondents to assign a fixed value in response, usually
numeric. The number of scale points depends on what sort of questions a researcher is asking.

3. Checklist type Multiple Choice Questions

This type of closed ended question expects the respondents to make choices from the many
options that have been stated, the respondent can choose one or more options depending on the
question being asked.

4. Rank Order Multiple Choice Question

These closed ended questions come with multiple options from which the respondent can choose
based on their preference. From most prefered to least prefered (usually in bullet points).
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WHEN TO USE CLOSE ENDED QUESTIONS?

In a survey it is most likely that you may end up answering only close ended questions. There is
a specific reason to this, close ended question helps gather actionable, quantitative data. Let’s
look at the definitive instances where closed-ended questions are useful.

1. To obtain quantitative insights:

Closed Ended Questions have very distinct responses, one can use these responses by
allocating a value to every answer. This makes it easy to compare responses of different
individuals which, in turn, enables statistical analysis of survey findings.

For example: respondents have to rate a product from 1 to 5 (where 1= Horrible, 2=Bad,
3=Average, 4= Good, and 5=Excellent) an average rating of 2.5 would mean the product
is below average.

2. To restrict the responses:

To reduce doubts, to increase consistency and to understand the outlook of a parameter

across the respondents close ended questions work the best as they have a specific set of
responses, that restricts the respondents and allows the person conducting the survey
obtain a more concrete result.

For example, if you ask open ended question “Tell me about your mobile usage”, you
will end up receiving a lot of unique responses. Instead one can use close ended question
(multiple choice), “How many hours do you use your mobile in a day”, 0-5 hours, 5-10
hours, 10-15 hours. Here you can easily analyse the data form a conclusion saying, “54%
of the respondents use their mobile for 0-5 hours a day.”

3. To conduct surveys on a large scale:

Close ended questions are often asked to collect facts about respondents. They usually
take less time to answer. Close ended questions work the best when the sample
population of the respondents is large.

For example, if an organization wants to collect information on the gadgets provided to

its employees instead of asking a question like, “What gadgets has the organization
provided to you?”, it is easier to give the employees specific choice like, laptop, tablet,
phone, mouse, others. This way the employees will be able to choose quickly and
correctly.
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ADVANTAGES OF CLOSE ENDED QUESTIONS

1. They are easy to understand hence the respondents don’t need to spend much time on
reading the questions time and again. Close ended questions are quick to respond to.
2. When the data is obtained and needs to be compared closed ended question provide better
insight.
3. Since close ended questions are quantifiable, the statistical analysis of the same becomes
much easier.
4. Since the response to the questions are straightforward it is much likely that the
respondents will answer on sensitive or even personal questions.

Although, many organisations use open ended questions in their survey, using close ended
question is beneficial because closed-ended questions come in a variety of forms and they are
usually categorized based on the need to have specific options for the respondents, so that they
can select them without any hesitation.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OPEN ENDED AND CLOSED ENDED

QUESTIONS

The selection between open-ended and closed-ended questions depends mainly on the below
factors.

 Type of data: Closed-ended questions are used when you need to collect data that will be
used for statistical analysis. They collect quantitative data and offer a clear direction of
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the trends. The statements inferred from the quantitative data are unambiguous and
hardly leave any scope for debate. Open-ended questions, on the other hand, collect
qualitative data pertaining to emotions and experiences that can be subjective in nature.
Qualitative data is used to generate sentiment analysis reports, text analytics, and word
cloud report.
 Depth of data: Closed-ended questions can be used to questions that collect quantifiable
data needed for the primary analysis. To dig into the reasons behind the response, open-
ended questions can be used. It will help you understand why respondents gave specific
feedback or a rating.
 Situation: At times, the options mentioned in the survey do not cover all the possible
scenarios. Open-ended questions help to cover this gap and offers freedom to the
respondents to convey whatever they want to. Where as closed-ended questions are
simple and easy to answer. It does not take much time to answer them and so are quite
respondent-friendly.

OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS VS CLOSE ENDED QUESTIONS

Open-ended questions motivate the respondents to put their feedback into words without
restricting their thoughts. They aren’t as objective and dominant as close-ended questions.
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EXAMPLES OF OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS VS CLOSED-ENDED

QUESTIONS

Most closed-ended questions can be turned into open-ended questions with a few minor changes.
Here’s an example: on the left- hand side, you have closed-ended questions; on the right-hand
side, each question has been tweaked into an open-ended version that allows respondents to
elaborate further.

 All the closed questions in the left column can be answered with a one-word answer,
specifically Yes or No.

These answers can give you the general sentiment of each user and a few useful data
points about their satisfaction, which can help you look at trends and percentages

for example, did the proportion of people who declared themselves happy with your
website change in the last 1, 3, 6, 12 months?

 The open-ended questions in the right column give customers an opportunity to provide
additional information and help you understand the context behind a problem or learn
more about your USPs (unique selling points) instead. So if it’s qualitative data like this
you’re after, the easy way to convert closed-ended into open-ended questions is to think
about the range of possible responses and re-word your questions to allow a free answer.

CONCLUSION
Open-ended questions prompt people to answer with sentences, lists, and stories, giving
deeper and new insights. Closed-ended questions limit answers: thus tighter stats. When
conducting usability studies or field studies, it’s a great idea to ask lots of open-ended
questions. Typically, researchers ask questions before, during, and after research sessions.
It’s easy to focus on what you want to know rather than on how you ask, but the way you
ask questions matters a lot in terms of what and how much you can discover. You can
learn unexpected and important things with this easy technique.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
 Basavanthapa,B.T. (2003). Nursing Education. 1st [Link]; Jaypee,422-461.
 Neeraja,K.P. (2008).Textbook OF Nursing Education.1st ed. Noida; Jaypee,
 Maheshwari, A. (2009).Communication Technology for [Link] Delhi; N R Brothers,
 Sankarnarayan,B. & Sindhu,B.(2003). Learning and Teaching Nursing.1st ed.
Mangalore;Brainfill,
 Neeraja KP (2003) “Text book of Nursing Education” New Delhi ,Jaypee brothers,363-
397.
 Basheer P, S (2018) ”Text book of Nursing Education”,Bangalore,(2nd ed), 313- 315.
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