A question is the formulation, demand or request that a person, company or institution demands of another in order to obtain an answer. The questions can be specified in a police-like context, such as the interrogation of the main suspect of a criminal act; in the educational field, at the time of submitting to a test or test; or in the journalistic field, and due to the investigation of a particular fact or event..
The questions, depending on the case and the final intention of the person asking them, can be structured and formulated in order to produce a very direct and concise answer, for example, obtain nothing more than a yes or no from the person questioned. ; or else in such a way that the person subjected to questioning must explain in greater detail, for example how they accessed the crime scene, which will obviously require and require the recapitulation or enumeration of a series of details to answer it.
In this sense, we speak then of "open" questions and "closed" questions. It is precisely the open ones that allow us to go even deeper than the simple “yes” or “no”. In general, to ask an open question, we should never start the question with a verb. For example, if we want to know someone's taste in music, we shouldn't ask "Do you like rock?" From that question, we will only get a "yes" or a "no". On the other hand, if we ask "What kind of music do you like?", The other will have much more possibilities to expand and tell us about their tastes, which is our goal.
Generally, surveys and obviously depending on the subject, are those that propose us and ask questions that require a very concise answer from us, only a yes or no as we said above, although of course there are exceptions. These are the "closed" questions, where it is not necessary for the questioner that we explain our tastes, opinions or opinions.
Meanwhile, for example, in college tests or university final exams, especially in subjects such as history, psychology, sociology, etc. a significant development of the response is usually required. For example, if you ask about the French Revolution, you are not only asking to specify the year or the place in which it took place, but also an explanation of the context and the factors that triggered it.
Likewise, and in contrast to this evaluation modality, it is also frequent that we find others in which the question is also accompanied by the possible answers from which the correct one must be chosen (multiple choices).
In surveys, for example, widely used in market research to find out our consumer habits, attitudes or actions, asking questions is a whole process. Whether you ask "open" or "closed" questions will depend on the amount of time it takes to process the responses of all respondents afterwards. In these cases, of course, the closed questions are much more concise, and statistics or percentages can be made from them based on how many people answered "yes", how many answered "no", or who instead they were undecided, using the option "does not know / does not answer". On the other hand, open questions, being much freer for the respondent to answer, will make the tabulation work (when the data thrown is recorded) a somewhat more difficult task, because the answers will be much more diverse.
On the other hand, in the case of a police investigation or, failing that, a journalistic investigation, in order to be successful in both, the domain of what is known as an "investigation question" will be required. In these cases, it is essential and of vital importance to achieve success in the interrogation (and before sitting down in front of the person who will be questioned, who constitutes a fundamental piece in the investigation in question), the formulation of clear and concise questions, that lead directly to the answer, which will surely be where the researcher posed his interest in advance. The main functions of this will be to clarify ideas, delimit the scope of the research and guide it towards the side that the researcher wants.
In journalistic activity, a series of strategies are used to consolidate an interrogation. For example, in interviews, journalists often put together a question guide in advance to guide the conversation with the interviewee. In the course of the talk, others may be added, or sometimes, the same interviewee answers a question that we had thought, without being explicitly asked. In the case of the news, we have a series of basic questions, which can guide us in the assembly or writing of a news text, in the face of a particular event that we must report, we have to answer questions such as what? Where? how ?, when ?, who? and because? If in a news text, we can expressly answer these six questions, we will be able to communicate or report correctly (with complete data) about the reported event.
