Introduction
Format of questions
Open and closed questions
Analysing the result
A quick guide
There are two types of question: open and closed. Closed questions are those where the respondent is given a number of alternative answers to choose from like this:
"How often do you read a newspaper:
- every day
- once a week
- never
Open questions allow the respondent to answer more fully and freely in their own way and often leave a space of several lines for this purpose:
"How often do you read a newspaper?
............................................
............................................
Most questionnaires will contain both types of question because they are appropriate in different contexts and provide different kinds of information for the researcher; for this reason we need to look a little more closely at these two types.
Closed questions
Closed questions are questions in which all possible answers are identified and the respondent is asked to choose one of the answers.
Advantages of closed questions
- Closed questions are a means of asking questions that have a definite set of clear-cut answers. They usually result in simple factual information.
- They require the respondent to answer clear, specific questions and therefore give a high level of control to the questioner.
- They involve the minimum effort on the part of the respondent.
- Because they provide uniform questions and answers, they make it easier to evaluate the information that has been obtained.
- They save time because they are less time consuming for respondents to complete. This may allow the questionnaire to ask more questions and may also increase the return rate.
- They avoid problems of interpreting respondents' handwriting.
- They can provide better information than open-ended questions, particularly where respondents are not highly motivated.
Disadvantages of closed questions
- Closed questions are useful only when the set of possible answers is known and are clear-cut.
- Poorly designed closed questions may be misleading and may frustrate respondents. Typical problems are questions that have answers other than those listed.
Closed questions with ranked answers
Some closed questions have ranked answers or a scale with a series of alternatives. This type of question is often used to evaluate respondents' attitudes and opinions. The scale is always balanced around a mid-point and often represents degrees of satisfaction with a particular service or degrees of agreement with a particular statement. For example a respondent may be asked to choose from the following alternatives: strongly agree, agree, have no strong feelings, disagree, strongly disagree.
You need to think carefully before choosing this type of ranked question because some attitudes and opinions are complex and cannot easily be summarized in a scale like this. Furthermore, scales do not provide any means for respondents to elaborate on their answers or explain the reasons behind their choices.
Open questions
Open questions are questions that allow the respondent to answer in any way they wish. For example:
"What do you think about environmental issues?"
Advantages of open questions
- They are very flexible.
- The respondent can answer in any way that they wish.
- They are the better means of finding out true opinions and identifying how strongly attitudes are held.
Disadvantages of open questions
- They require more thought and time on the part of respondent. This reduces the number of questions that the questionnaire can realistically ask.
- It is more difficult to standardize opinion across a sample of questionnaires using open questions.
- Respondents may answer in unhelpful ways.
- Respondents may have trouble expressing themselves accurately.
Should I Use Open or Closed Questions?
Since open questions allow the respondent to answer in exactly the way that they wish they are more useful if your aim is to uncover attitudes and genuine feelings.
If the main purpose of your research is not to discover attitudes but produce statistical data for graphs and charts, then you should opt for closed questions.
Closed questions make it much easier to count up the different answers; this is especially true if the possible answers are numbered or pre-coded on the questionnaires. (You can find out more about pre-coding and analysing your results here).