When open-ended questions are appropriate

There are different views abont the nsefulness (and worth) of open-ended questions (Lawless and Heymann, 2010 Stone and Sidel, 2004). As overviewed in the previons section, the skilful experimenter shonld carefully consider the research questions and analyse the pros and cons to make an informed decision of the procedure to follow. Open-ended questions are highly recommended in the following situations  

When it is important (if not essential) to collect people s opinions (or descriptions or associations) in their own words. What words do they use to describe their perception or experience with something For instance, when a company has launched a new product, it could be valuable to ask an open-ended question about it to see what words the target consumers use to describe it. In addition, in case these allow for general associations, the responses could have marketing applications too. Remember also that these terms are likely to be the most salient characteristics of the product as perceived by the consumer. 

When it is necessary to know the spontaneous reasoning behind consumers (or untrained panels ) perceptions of the sensory, hedonic and/or emotional differences or similarities between products. In this case, the researcher would not only want to measure how the participants perceive the products, but also to collect the genuine reasons for these perceptual differences, which will differ from one person to another. 

When the aim is to discover something new. The research team might think that all the important possible attributes of a product could be provided by themselves. But, by allowing subjects to provide their own terms, ideas that had not been considered before might come up, and they might even snggest attributes that could be included in future studies closed-ended questions. 

Rapid Sensory Profiling Techniques and Related Methods 

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