Political polling and other opinion related surveys literature has a large body of knowledge on open- vs. close-ended questions. These surveys are often telephone RDD or in-person interviews or, more recently, Web-based surveys. High item non-response has been one of the major reasons for surveys to avoid open-ended questions whenever possible. Even the openended questions that are limited to filling out a text field have been known to have high nonresponse. National Household Education Survey (NHES) in 2011 administered a mail survey field test with imbedded experiments on open-/close-ended questions. The respondents to the survey were first recruited by filling out a screener questionnaire. After an eligible child was selected from the information in the screener, a more extensive topical questionnaire was sent. The follow-up survey asked parents about their child’s education and the parental care and family involvement in child’s development. Imbedded in the design, there were questions which were asked in one form as an open-ended question and in another form as a close-ended question. The two forms were tested experimentally. One such question was on how many times a child was read to in the past week: one set of parents received an answer option in a write-in form and another set of parents received an answer option in the form of categories. In this paper, we will explore the response rates for these open-ended vs. close-ended option items. Our hypothesis is that the open-ended items are skipped more often than the closeended items. We will use logistic regression to estimate the likelihood of response for one type of question vs. the other, controlling for other factors that may affect the response. This study will build up literature on the open- vs. close-ended questions as it relates to the mail household surveys.