Close-Ended Questions: Definition, Examples and When to Use Them

Pros and cons of closed ended questions

Closed questions are fast to answer and analyse, but the options you provide shape the answers you get.

The steering effect is real. In an experiment reported by the Pew Research Center, voters were asked which issue mattered most in the 2008 presidential election. When the economy was offered as an option, 58% chose it; only 35% named it when asked open-ended. Fewer than 1 in 10 of the closed group gave an answer outside the five listed, while 43% of the open group did.

The upside: a web survey experiment by Reja and colleagues (2003) found open-ended questions produced more missing data and more inadequate answers than closed ones.

EXPERT PERSPECTIVE

Jon Krosnick and Stanley Presser note that an "Other" option does little to rescue a missing category, because respondents stick to the choices offered. They also describe satisficing: when effort or motivation dips, people pick a good-enough answer instead of the most accurate one.

Paraphrased from Krosnick and Presser, Question and Questionnaire Design (2010)

How do you write answer options that cover every answer?

Make every option list exhaustive (every realistic answer has a home) and mutually exclusive (no answer fits two boxes). Pew calls out both rules in its guidance on closed-ended questions.

Call it the MECE problem: mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive. Overlapping ranges are the classic slip.

BEFORE: OVERLAPS AND GAPS How long have you worked here?

• 0 to 1 year
• 1 to 3 years
• 3 to 5 years
• 5 years or more
• Someone with exactly 1 or 3 years fits two boxes.

AFTER: EXHAUSTIVE AND MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE How long have you worked here?

• Less than 1 year
• 1 year to less than 3 years
• 3 years to less than 5 years
• 5 years or more
• Prefer not to say