Final answer:
The correct answer is that open-ended questions are best used for gathering preliminary information. They provide qualitative data and allow for detailed, subjective responses that vary from person to person.
Step-by-step explanation:
The true statement about open-ended questions is that they are best used for gathering preliminary information. Open-ended questions allow participants to provide more detailed and subjective responses that might convey personal beliefs, political views, goals, or morals. Such questions require short essay responses and provide qualitative data, which is subjective and varies from person to person. They are useful for exploring ideas where multiple viewpoints or experiences may exist and are useful for qualitative research.
In contrast to closed-ended questions, which can be answered with a simple "yes" or "no" or by selecting from a list of predefined answers, open-ended questions are not easily tabulated or statistically analyzed due to the range of possible responses. Therefore, they do not make the tabulation and comparison of data easy and are not necessarily best applied when samples are large due to the time-intensive nature of analyzing the responses.