Collect qualitative responses with the Open Ended (OE) question type.

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Building an Open Ended Question

1. In the Survey Editor, click the Open Ended icon in the question menu, or drag the icon into place.
2. Type or paste your question into the Question field.
3. Activate the Make optional checkbox to allow respondents to skip the question (by default, Open Ended questions require a response).
4. Select the Min: dropdown to specify a minimum number of required characters per response.
5. Select the Max: dropdown to specify a maximum number of characters per response.

Further customize your question view by adding images.

Analyzing Open Ended Responses on the Results Page

On the Results page, Open Ended Responses display in line with other questions, with several visualizations available.

1. By default, your question appears with a few Notable verbatims highlighted as a sample.
   • Hover over a response and click Copy to copy the verbatim to your clipboard.
   • Click the second dropdown to switch responses in view from Longest, Median length, to Shortest.
   • In the Search field, type terms you'd like to filter for, press Enter, then click the magnifying glass to show responses with those terms highlighted.
2. Click the first dropdown and select Sentiments to view a chart categorizing responses as Negative, Neutral, Positive, Mixed, or No sentiment.
3. Select Codebooks to view a chart quantifying the various codes placed on responses from the Open Ended Responses interface.
4. Select Wordcloud to load a word cloud and frequency table for all responses to the question.
5. Click the Verbatim icon in the menu at the top of the page (or on the right side of the question header) for a more in-depth exploration. Use the dropdown to sort by time, sentiment, length, or kudos.

⚠️ Note: If Sentiments and/or Verbatim Coding have not been applied to your open-ended responses, these options will not appear in the dropdown list.

Word Clouds

With the Wordcloud visualization selected:

1. Select a pre-set visual theme from the dropdown, or click the gear button to expand control options.
2. Use the sliders to change the number of words displayed in the cloud and the contrast size of most and least used words.
3. Rotate word angle and orientation with the tilted A buttons.
4. Select a different font from the dropdown.
5. Change the color to a pre-set palette from the dropdown, or enter hex codes using the eyedropper tool.
6. Click the Add Mask dropdown to display words in a certain shape.
7. Enable features like Fix misspells, Smart capitalization, Merge similar words, and link 2-word phrases by activating the appropriate checkbox. Use the dropdown to hide common English words or hide certain words from the cloud.
8. Click Apply to all word clouds to standardize that look and feel across all OE responses.

Learn more about Word Clouds.

Viewing All Open Ended Responses

1. Click the Verbatim icon at the top of the Results page. Answers are grouped by Response ID in the order respondents submitted their survey.
2. Click the questions menu to filter by specific questions, or use the search bar to search for keywords or phrases.
3. Click Reject for up to 5% of irrelevant responses, or thank respondents for great responses with the Give kudos button. Kudos sends respondents a thank-you note and boosts their trait score in the Paid Viewpoint dashboard.
4. Click the Coding icon in the left menu to organize responses by labeling and categorizing insightful comments using codebooks and codes.
5. Click the Export icon to download an editable version of the full open-ended responses as an Excel or CSV file.

Check out the Open Ended Response articles for more in-depth analysis tools, like Skipper Autocode and Verbatim Coding.

Take a test drive on real-world results for this question type! Explore a live demo report.

Check out these Help Center articles for more resources on organizing and analyzing Open Ended Responses.