---
generated_by: surveylegend-page-markdown
title: Enabling the Other Choice | SurveyLegend
description: This guide explains how to enable the Other choice so respondents
  can enter an answer that is not included among the predefined options.
canonical: https://www.surveylegend.com/user-guide/enable-other-choice/
---

How can we help?

Search our guides, features and best practices.

Search User Guide articles

Popular searches

![SurveyLegend mascot helping a new user learn how the online survey tool works](https://www.surveylegend.com/user-guide-media/hero/surveylegend-user-guide-help-mascot.avif)

# ![Enable other choice](https://www.surveylegend.com/user-guide-media/icons/other-keyboard.svg)Enable *Other* choice

If  you want to give your respondents the option to type an answer which does not exist among the available answers, you can always enable the *other* option. Enabling *other* adds a text box in which your respondents can type in their own answer. These type of questions are also known as “open-ended” questions, and they allow you to collect answers that you may not have thought of when making your survey.

Note:

Respondents’ manually added answers will be shown all together, as a group in Live analytics, called “Other”. To be able to view them one by one, you need to [export your survey data](https://www.surveylegend.com/user-guide/exporting-survey-data/ "How to export survey data in different formats, and save it locally on your computer or Google Drive.") or preview the data in the [Individual Responses](https://www.surveylegend.com/user-guide/tracking-individual-respondents/) view.

Tip:

When you enable the “Other” choice, you will notice that a text box gets added as the last choice in the list of choices. By default, this text box gets the lablel: “Other”. However, you can simply edit it to anything you need. Perhaps you need to type the label in your own language or explain something more.

***

### Open-ended vs. closed questions

How to choose between open-ended and closed questions when designing a survey? Generally, open-ended questions are questions that do not provide response options. When you ask a respondent to answer in his/her own words, you are using an open-ended question. However, “closed,” or “forced-choice” questions, also known as *[Single selection](https://www.surveylegend.com/user-guide/single-selection/)* or *[Multiple selection](https://www.surveylegend.com/user-guide/multiple-selection/)* questions, are those that offer a limited number of responses from which the respondent can choose the best answer or answers. These two types of questions are used for different purposes and require the evaluator to analyze and interpret data in distinct ways.

Tips:

Nevertheless, the narrative type of responses collected via open-ended questions can be more complex and harder to analyze. Also, it will be harder to make a nicely illustrated report from the responses. Such answers usually require more interpretation than well-designed forced-choice questions.

*Enabling the *other* choice is available for:* [![Survey Field: Single selection](https://www.surveylegend.com/user-guide-media/icons/fields-most-common-single-selection.svg "Survey Field: Single selection")Single selection](https://www.surveylegend.com/user-guide/single-selection/) [![Survey Field: Multiple selection](https://www.surveylegend.com/user-guide-media/icons/fields-most-common-multiple-selection.svg "Survey Field: Multiple selection")Multiple selection](https://www.surveylegend.com/user-guide/multiple-selection/)