Take notes on potential questions as you read. While you read the source material for your class discussion, write down broad, big-picture questions about what you’re reading. If you have identified or been given a purpose for reading, use it to guide the questions that you might ask. Later, you can use these notes to help write more polished, final open-ended questions. If you have trouble coming up with specific questions while reading, underline or circle portions of the text that seem important, confusing, or connected to your purpose for reading. You can return to these later as starting points for your written open-ended questions.
For example, instead of asking: “Were you satisfied with your experience?” You could try something like: “What about your experience did you find most satisfying, and what about it did you find frustrating or difficult?” Instead of simply giving a “yes” or “no” answer, your respondents will give you specific information, and possibly new ideas for improving your product or service. However, if you’re looking for simpler, more quantitative data, it might be easier to rely on multiple-choice, yes-no, or true-false questions, all of which are closed-ended. For example, if you’re trying to find out which gelato flavor was the most popular at your shop this month, it would be easier to ask a closed-ended question about which the respondent purchased most frequently, and then list all available flavors as potential answers.
Examples of effective open-ended questions to ask in an employment interview include: “In a previous job, have you ever made a mistake that you had to discuss with your employer? How did you handle the situation?” or “When you’re very busy, how do you deal with stress?”
This strategy can be especially useful when interviewing a candidates for public office, who are often more concerned with pushing their own platform than with giving thorough, honest answers. Closed-ended questions allow interviewees like these to halt the conversation with a “Yes, but…” or “No, but…” response, and then redirect it towards their own agenda.
This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule – you can write a closed-ended question with any leading word. For example, “What color shirt was she wearing?” is decidedly a closed-ended question.
Analytical or meaning-driven questions might ask why a character in a literary text is behaving a certain way, what the importance of a particular concept is, or what the meaning of a scene or image might be. In a class discussion about a novel, you might ask: “What is the significance of the fact that Mary held back tears as she finished her donut towards the end of Chapter 2?” Comparison questions might ask about similarities or differences between character perspectives, or ask the respondent to compare and contrast two different methods or ideas. For example, in a marketing survey, you could ask, “Which model of can opener – the Ergo-Twist or the Ergo-Twist II – was easier to use, and why?" Clarifying questions might ask what the meaning of a complicated idea or an unclear term might be. For instance, if you’re interviewing someone who keeps bringing up “the war on Christmas,” you might ask them, “What exactly do you mean by that statement? Who is attacking Christmas, and how?” Cause-and-effect questions might ask why a character is displaying an emotion in a particular situation, or what connections might exist between two different ideas. An example of a cause-and-effect question that you might ask in an interview could be: “What aspects of your experience in college sports might influence your approach to this job?”
An example of an excessively vague question might be “What about Jeff’s strange behavior?” (Well, what about it?) A leading question hints at the expected answer, thus making it difficult for students who have different ideas to speak up. An example might be: “Why is the ocean a symbol of human insignificance and existential despair?” An example of a yes or no question would be: “Does the grandfather disapprove of his granddaughter’s desire to become a cowgirl?”
This could mean offering survey respondents a text box to type or write their answers in, rather than bubbles to fill in. In a conversational setting, like a journalistic interview, this means avoiding giving your subject potential answers when you pose the question. For example, instead of asking, “Would you prioritize an aggressive overhaul of public transportation or the increased use of alternative fuels?” ask a question like: “What strategies would you prioritize to make our city more energy-efficient?”
For example, if you ask a multiple-choice question like “How often do you visit your local public library? A) Often, B) Sometimes, or C) Never,” you could follow it up with questions like: “If you chose A, what aspects of our library keep you coming back?” or “If you chose C, what prevents or dissuades you from visiting the library?”
