Advantages and limitations of open questions in questionnaire studies of patients' satisfaction with family doctor care

Background. The present-day canon of the research into patients' satisfaction with health care involves the application of a questionnaire technique exclusively based on closed questions. Sometimes, at the very end an open question happens to appear; however, it is of ritual nature and used to satisfy the respondent who lacks the possibility to make a spontaneous comment rather than a source of information important for a researcher. However, its real value still remains an open issue. Objectives. To test the usefulness of open questions in classical quantitative investigations, the modes of result analysis were checked and a comparison was made between answers to open and closed questions. Material and methods. The study was conducted on a sample of 360 patients of family doctors. The questionnaire form contained 75 closed questions (including demographic data) and one open question that required additional comments concerning the care provided by family doctor and family nurse. Responses to this question-often very broad-were given by 160 patients, i. e. 44.4% of the study population. Results. Positive responses showed only a slight predominance among a total number of utterances. However, replies to closed questions were by far more frequently positive. It appeared that in the light of respondents' opinions, categorization schemes for positive and negative assessments can be the same in relation to doctors and nurses, but different for medical centers and the system. Conclusions. The analysis of responses to open questions provided in-depth information, especially about problems and issues not present in the questionnaire form. The study showed a bit more complete picture of patients' dissatisfaction and a number of their desiderates, easily translatable into the language of organizational decisions. However, the results are not representative and thus cannot be generalized, which seems to be the major limitation.