To understand the thinking behind respondents' answers, researchers occasionally use open-ended questions. Getting a quality response to open-ended questions can be challenging but attending to the visual design of the question and using a motivational statement in the question can increase item response and data quality. To understand the use of open-ended questions in surveys further, we designed an experiment testing the effect of an importance statement (present/absent) and box size

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... mall) on item response rate and response quality in a mixed-mode (web and mail modes) survey. Data for the study came from a survey of Florida Cooperative Extension Service (FCES) clients. The results showed that item response was improved with the importance prompt, irrespective of box size. The combination of importance statement and larger answer box also resulted in more words. Web responses produced more words than those on paper and words counts were significantly improved with an importance prompt for web responses. Overall, the combination of importance prompt, larger box size and web mode was most important in producing the best item response rate and response quality in our mixed-mode survey. To understand the thinking behind respondents' answers, survey designers sometimes use open-ended questions in paper and web surveys. According to Dillman, Smyth, and Christian (2014), open-ended questions can be put into three categories: 1) numerical entry (e.g., count, date, frequency), 2) list of items (e.g., name of persons to whom you provided advice, places visited in the last week), and 3) descriptive open-ended questions (e.g., suggestions for ways to improve service delivery). Among all three, descriptive open-ended questions are often used by researchers because respondents can report rich and detailed information about the topic of interest (Tourangeau, Rips, and Rasinski 2000). Open-ended questions have * This research is part of Florida Agricultural Extension Station project FLA-AEC-005352 and supported in part by the USDA-NIFA. We wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Address correspondence to: