Concept in Definition ABC

A question is the formulation, demand or request that a person, company or institution They sue another in order to get an answer. The questions can be specified in a police-type 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 response, for example, get nothing more than a yes or no from the person interrogated; or in such a way that the person under questioning must explain in greater detail, for example how he acceded to the scene of the crime, which obviously will 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 what he likes, 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 a no as we said above, although of course there is 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, it is not only requested that the year or place in which it took place be specified, but also an explanation of the context and the factors that triggered it.

Likewise, and in contrast to this modality of evaluationIt is also frequent that we find others in which the question is also accompanied by the possible answers from which we will have to choose the correct one (multiple choices).

In surveys, for example, widely used in market research to learn about our consumption habits, attitudes or actions, the formulation of 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 it is possible to make, from them, statistics or percentages based on what number of people answered “yes”, how many answered “no”, or who, on the other hand, were undecided, using the option “don't know / no answer". On the other hand, open questions, being much freer for the respondent to answer, will do the job of tabulation (when the data thrown is recorded) a somewhat more difficult task, because the answers will be much more various.

On the other hand, in the case of a police investigation or, failing that, a journalistic investigation, it will be required, to come to fruition in both, from the domain of what is known as a “research question”. In these cases, it is elementary and of vital importance to achieve success in the interrogation (and before sitting in front of the person to be interrogated, who constitutes a piece fundamental in the research in question), the formulation of clear and concise questions, which lead directly to the answer, which will surely be where the researcher posed beforehand your interest. The main functions of this will be to clarify ideas, delimit the scope of the investigation 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 can 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 drafting of a news text, faced with 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.