First of all, what do you want to do as an end result? Display, calculations, comparissons…?

Generally speaking, ChatGPT is correct, it is better to find a standardised way to store stuff. Furthermore, storing digits is way more evolutive than storing emojis or text in general.

If some answers can have 5 different answers, but others only 3. Maybe you can standardise this by attributing different weight to each answer. Basically you can say that “no” is equivalent to the most extreme :-1: and yes is equivalent to the most extreme :+1:.

Explanation :
:-1::-1::person_shrugging::+1::+1: = [1,2,3,4,5]
No | Dont know | Yes = [1,3,5]