Question

What are closed-ended and open-ended questions? Use example to discuss

Answer 1

Closed ended questions provide the user with a fixed number of responses from which one has to choose from. Such type of questions is answered with a given set of alternatives. The alternative choices to the answers are usually mutually exclusive and exhaustive meaning that no two answers can overlap in terms of meaning and the choices must be logically sound. Examples of close ended questions include having responses such as yes or no; multiple choice list; Likert scale responses such as 1 Agree, 2 Disagree.

Importance of open ended questions: useful in gathering quantitative data and thus quantifying the answers. Since the responses are from a given list, comparisons can be made among individuals in terms of their preferences, opinions and choices. Since the choices are limited, it removes room for ambiguity and maintains consistency when administering it to many people. Close ended questions are often used in surveys as it can be administered to a large no of population, is not time consuming and expensive.

Open ended questions usually measure the opinion and thoughts about a topic from individuals. They provide individuals with an opportunity to give detailed explanation to their answers as opposed to close ended questions. Examples include unstructured questions, word association test.

Open ended questions do not limit the responses of individuals and thus one ca get a better understanding of their thoughts and opinions. They are used in pilot studies to understand the audience and to help fix the quality of questions for a research. Open ended questions are extremely beneficial when it is left at the end of a survey as a comment section as it is useful in gaining insights into one’s opinions. A major disadvantage of open ended questions is that it is time consuming, expensive.