If you’ve ever spent time with a two or three or four-year-old you know how exhausting it can be. Why is the sky blue? Why do I have to wear socks? Why does it rain? Why? How come? Why?! Those never-ending questions are a young mind’s foray into the wonder filled world of learning.
Open-ended survey questions are an equally critical learning tool in the work world. They give organizations and leadership a glimpse at how employees think, perceive, and feel about certain subjects and why.
Because open-ended questions involve a greater amount of a respondent’s time and effort, the secret is to ask strategically, thoughtfully, and sparingly. You don’t want to overwhelm and exhaust your employees when launching an engagement survey.
To establish a benchmark for tracking and monitoring trends over time, closed questions are your best choice. A set of fixed responses makes it easy to tally, calculate percentages and compare results:
I would like to see organization [xyz] change its approach to remote working:
Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly Disagree
But when it comes to open-ended survey questions — the why, what for and how queries — you’re looking at an altogether different beast.
The type and wording of open-ended survey questions draw out different kinds of answers and insights.
Whimsical open-ended questions give permission to be creative yet honest:
If you were granted one wish by the Job Genie, what single workplace change would you request?
Pointed open-ended questions typically get straight forward responses:
What one workplace change would you like to see?
Like just about everything there are two sides around the question of an open-ended question. On the downside:
On the flip side, open-ended survey questions:
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