You may have to take different approaches to get the different types of information, more than one of which may appear on the same survey. Some areas may benefit from indirection because people often answer in a way that they think enhances their stature. Success with a survey depends on having the right mechanisms to help people respond. That means structuring questions in such a way that the responses you receive are most useful. In the former, you let subjects say anything they want in answering a question.
People can say exactly what is on their minds, which is an advantage.
You can gain great insights because open-ended questions force you to listen to the audience. A drawback, that doesn t appear until you try to analyze the results, is the impossibility of directly comparing one person s words to another s. You inevitably have to fit answers into categories, and then perform an analysis. This results in extra work as well as potential problems from imposing structure on people after the fact. Close-ended questions are more common in surveys.