Yes. as long as it is helpful for your research. Try to brainstorm the possible questions and answer choices and visualize the outcomes and then adjust accordingly.

Jerry - unstructured and semi-structured questionnaires can be used to collect qualitative data. However, by their nature, structured questions are designed to collect and capture numerical data - so are not suitable for qualitative studies. You can use both, however, in mixed method/multi method approaches.

The purpose of qualitative research is to collect rich information on the experiences or beliefs of your interviewees. You may need a few demographic questions, but the main interview questions should all be open-ended.

In addition, you should be prepared to ask follow-up questions that are not on your list, so that you can fully explore the experiences your interviewees are talking about.

Yes. as long as it is helpful for your research. Try to brainstorm the possible questions and answer choices and visualize the outcomes and then adjust accordingly.

I think there is often too much of a desire to compartmentalise types of research than to simply do good research. "Pure" quantitative research involves only numbers; "pure" qualitative research involves only words - or, rather, anything that doesn't involve numbers. And each of them, at their extremes, has a range of analytic procedures that are completely foreign to the other.

Furthermore, genuine mixed-method research (in my view) should involve use of advanced analytical procedures from each of the methods it represents.

But between the two extremes, I think there are many ways of conducting research that are valuable and the methodological purists shouldn't provide impediments to those kinds of research. Do, to the best of your ability, whatever is going to address the research questions you're asking!

If you want to label your research as qualitative, then you would need to have a good reason for adding closed open-ended questions. Also, if you are planning on doing statistical analyses on those questions, you should be aware that is very difficult to obtain significant results with small N samples.

Thank you all for all your answers. They are very helpful. However, is there anyone that can help me with references to butress the use of both closed and open ended questions for qualitative research.

It would help if you could be more explicit about the goals for using close-ended questions -- what purposes will they serve within the interview?

Thanks to everyone for making my work easier. Mr. Mohammad Madi, the references you recommended is very helpful.

Mr David L. Morgan, thanks for your helpful direction. To be more explicit, I am using a non probability (purposive) total population sampling techniques. I have selected and using all the 170 firms listed on the Nigeria Stock Exchange. This study is qualitative and no quantitative analysis is intended. Thematic analysis will be used used for the analysis of data collected. A questionnaire, interviews and secondary sources of information with be adopted for this study. The structured questionnaire with both closed and open ended questions in addition to an unstructured telephone interview with open ended question will be administered on competitive intelligence specialists and key users of competitive intelligence within these firms. The purpose is to

1. Questionnaire responses will be used to inform discussion during unstructured interviews.

2. The closed questions would prompt the respondents to engage fully in completing the questionnaire.

3. A questionnaire with closed and opened ended questions would help the researcher cover respondents spread across a wide geographical space like Nigeriea more effectively.

4. Will complement the interview and secondary source of data which would allow for triagulation

5. Cost effective.

6. Encourage respondents to reflect on their experiences and perspectives.

Dear Jerry I agree with Robert Trevethan , but if you want to use Grounded Theory. your open questions must be in its framework. And if you want to use other methods you can ask any open question that may help you to achieve your research goal.

Hi Jerry,

The cliché is "qual-quant-qual".....you would normally undertake qualitative research first - interviews, focus groups, forums etc...(without a survey). This qualitative phase (hopefully informed by prior literature research) gives you sufficient insight into the target audience to help you develop your survey (quantitative) phase. You can, of course, use structured questions in your qualitative phase - but these should not be "leading questions" ( embedding your hypothesis prior to listening to your target audience). You really need to run some open-ended qualitative sessions prior to developing quantitative surveys (structured questionnaires). Then you can make sure that your presumptions of what is important can be cross-checked with results from your qualitative session/s. Once you have developed and undertaken a structured survey/questionnaire (based on your qualitative sessions and literature review) you usually may need to go back to/convene additional qualitative sessions to investigate further any apparent ambiguities or unexpected findings in your quantitative phase - viz qual-quant-qual.

Good luck

The selection of data collection methods and tools depends mainly on the type of research and objective you want to address. Careful deliberation of the aim of your study, in particular, is critical to select the appropriate data collection method and tool. Close-ended structured questionnaires are used in quantitative research (designed to gather numerical data/variables). Unstructured and semi-structured questionnaires are used to collect qualitative data in qualitative research. recommended

Yes, of course, you can. For the close-ended questions, I have two suggestions: 1) ask probing or follow-up questions for richer content. 2) when doing qualitative research, if there is the possibility to re-word a close-ended question into an open-ended one, I would do that.

Hi jerry

in my point of view, you can do this but it depends on your research subject and your research cases

It depends on your research, on your design and your tools.

A closed ended questionnaire cannot be used in qualitative research! A structured closed ended questionnaire is a tool of quantitative research!

When you give a tip of the possible answer it does not remain a qualitative research! Qualitative research does not go like this!

A semi-structured questionnaire will be more appropriate for a qualitative study

I'm doing qualitative based study. my experience recommends semi-structured and open-ended questions. You will receive much more rich and rigorous information in you data. And you will have more opportunities to attempt more analytical techniques.

Hi Jerry, all good answers above for the most part. However, let me suggest you first research the topic of qualitative research at a university library (electronic). In the absence of that, Google Scholar will suffice simply by entering the search term "qualitative research methods." https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C10&q=qualitative+research+methods&btnG=. Many good sources turn up. Also keep in mind that quantitative components to qualitative research make for rich research. While terms questionnaire and survey are interchangeable for some, survey largely refers to the use of close-ended, semi-structured questions. Questionnaires, on the other hand, enable the use of open-ended questions for reasons that participants may offer information not previously thought by the researcher. A very productive tool. I can go on. Again, conduct some research on doing research. This you will find most helpful.

I did many research applying qualitative method. In my opinion, the kinds of method that we use to get data are depended on the content of the research. It is usual to use structured questions once we need the structural phenomena. But in the heart of qualitative research is the question about value, so the open questions will be appropriate to be applied in this context by probing. The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research by Denzin and Lincoln is very appropriate reference to deepen our knowledge about qualitative research

Hola, para una investigación cualitativa se inician preguntando de manera integral por el fenómeno de estudio, por lo tanto no se puede usar preguntas cerradas, salvo haga una triangulación de método, cuanti cuali.

If you are using a qualitative method then you can only use open-ended questions because the aim is to have a discussion on your topic. An unstructured open-ended interview can be of benefit because you want the discussion to be free flow. Therefore you ask the questions in a format that allow the free flow of the discussion.

You can use closed questions for clarity or probing or follow up during the discussion but can not form the main part of your discussion guide unless they are respondent qualifying questions at the start. Again it highly depends on the design of your discussion guide. If you have some sort of exercises - for example, an extra questionnaire that will assist you in your discussion which the respondent completes at the start or in the middle of the interview, I do not believe there is any rule that states these questions cannot be closed questions. It is data you need to support your discussion guide but data that you can not quantify as in qualitative you never use a representative sample that allows you you to report any quantification. You may show the numbers to make a point but not to be representative. If you need that, then you might want to consider a mixed-method strategy.

Hope that helps.

Good luck.

Questions depend on several factors, including purpose of study and specific question. For the most part, however, try to stick to the traditions of each ontology (qualitative/quantitative) given that they are based on specific philosophies of reality and in so doing knowledge creation.

Amongst others, the phenomenon itself decides whether it requires qualitative investigation or quantitative investigation? For example testing a model is not a qualitative phenomenon! Testing whether some people are using certain products is not is not a purely qualitative phenomenon! Examining the effects of use of a product is not a qualitative phenomenon!

So you really need to understand your research problem properly, whether it needs to be handled from a qualitative or quantitative mode on inquiry!

It's not about the wish of the researchers that they want to do the research in certain way!

It advisable to use semi-structured questionnaires in qualitative research.

For me it will be appropriate you used open-ended questions

Thanks to everyone for your support. NOW, MORE CLARIFICATION ON WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT IM MY RESEARCH. SEE BELOW.

Can I use a mixed questionnaire or mixed questions (closed and open-ended) in qualitative research?

I am working on a PhD Thesis in the area of competitive intelligence. I have adopted a qualitative research method. The respondents are competitive intelligence specialists and managers of different departments, units and functions of some firms. I am using 3 different instruments namely structured survey questionnaire, interview and secondary data, while a range of respondents' groupings will be used, thereby allowing for triangulation which will contribute to the rigour and reliability of the data collected and results. See the explanation of the instruments below. 1. Structured survey questionnaires or "questionview" to be self-administered online by the managers and users of competitive intelligence. Each of the question under this instrument will contain a closed question followed by an open question leading from the closed question. This kind of priming would make the first part, the closed question to serve as a stimulus to providing an answer to the second part, the open-ended question. See an example below: a. Have you ever received any formal training in any area of competitive intelligence? (Yes) (No) Please provide details: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________ b. Do you have a functional competitive intelligence unit within your firm? (Yes) (No) Please explain: __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ c. How do you rate the quality, utility value and the contribution of competitive to the decision making process and the competitiveness of your firm? (Excellent) (Very Good) (Good) (Fair) (Poor) Please provide details: __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 2. Telephone Interview with purely open-ended questions to be administered to competitive intelligence specialists from the same set of firms. The content of the interview will closely be related to the survey questions except that it will strictly be open-ended questions because of the wide geographical spread of the firms and respondents involved in this study. 3. Secondary data: Literature review, company annual reports and the Global competitiveness index. Importantly, the data collected from these 3 methods will be analysed using Grounded Theory or/and Thematic analysis. My question is, are these instruments appropriate for my qualitative research?

Lot of inputs.

The idea of using an initial quantitative question as "stimulus material" (priming) for a qualitative follow-up makes good sense. The idea of qualitative-quantitative triangulation is less clear. In particular, what one typically triangulates is a set of qualitative results with a set of quantitative results. But as I indicated earlier, qualitative studies usually have an N that is so small that it cannot generate significant results.

Here is an article that I found useful on Qualitative survey:

Jansen, H. (2010). The logic of qualitative survey research and its position in the field of social research methods. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 11 (2).

https://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1450

Yes, certainly, this is depending on your questionnaire’s objective. You may want to have combined techniques (open-ended and closed) approaches to collect information from your participants as well as measure their knowledge of their concern to improve your results or Findings. However, although questionnaires (closed - ended) are not among the most dominant methods in qualitative research, they have their uses as methodological tools. These types of methodological tools (combined techniques) should be flexible enough for both qualitative and quantitative investigations to obtain a clearer understanding of the phenomenon as well as to gain some insight into how this phenomenon might affect the outcome of your research.

(Woods & Pratt, 2006)

Woods, P., & Pratt, N. (2006). Qualitative Research. P Woods, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth.

A rule of thumb is that structured questionnaires are typical of quantitative research while unstructured questionnaires synchronise with the qualitative tradition in research. The data obtained from a structured questionnaire does not necessarily conflict with the intent from a qualitative enquiry. It is very common to have a section in your questionnaire that is fully structured. You may want to obtain long narratives on your respondents' perceptions and attitudes. Still, dichotomous values for the gender variable in your research may also be of value to tour research. I suggest you consider your options for both structured and unstructured questionnaires bearing in mind that there exist many subcategories for the two traditions.

Stuctured questionnaire is a tradition in quantitative survey. You, therefore, may not use that. A qualitative study has the advantage of eliciting richer and more in-depth data. So, I advise you utilize in-depth interview method for data gathering. You only need an interview guide for this method; this will enable you probe your respondents further to eliciting the needed robust data. All the best.

Hi @Jerry Okundaye more recent article regarding qualitative survey in research that you may find helpful:

Braun, V., Clarke, V., Boulton, E., Davey, L., & McEvoy, C. (2020, ahead of print). The online survey as a qualitative research tool. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2020.1805550

Other helpful sources are:

Flick, U. (2018). An Introduction to Qualitative Research (6th ed.). Sage. and

Flick, U. (2018). Doing Triangulation and Mixed Methods (2nd ed.). Sage.

If you can use in your research qualitative a questionnarie with closed and open ended questions, but it must take into account the objective of the research and its theoretical-methodological design

Using open ended questions in a questionnaire will result in several issues, including difficulty in coding and analysis.

I agree with, Christiana Adetunde. From your title, it seems that you're going to work on a exploratory research. So, I think the open-ended questions are more useful.