> But that sounds fundamentally incompatible with having a fixed list of categories, with that approach surely it would have to be a free text field (or at leas

> But that sounds fundamentally incompatible with having a fixed list of categories, with that approach surely it would have to be a free text field (or at least a couple categories, along with either a text field or an "other" category, like with gender nowadays I agree, but generally it is, in my experience, as well as almost invariably being completely optional.