Close-ended questions: What they are, examples, and how to use them

To get the best possible insights from your data, you need to ask questions that deliver what you need. In market research, close-ended survey questions help to quickly gather statistically significant data, in addition to delivering higher survey response rates. 

That's because a close-ended question is concise and offers a set range of potential responses. The simplest possible responses are Yes/No, while others could ask a respondent to select their favorite aspect of a product out of 5 different options.

Let’s dive into the importance of effective questioning, outlining how close-ended questions can be a winning tool in a researcher’s toolbox. 

Close-ended questions offer a respondent a limited selection of potential answers. Respondents will choose from answers such as “true/false,” “yes/no,” or from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” They differ from open-ended questions in that there are a select range of answers, rather than an open box for unlimited response variations.

Gathering data from many respondents allows you to easily compare and analyze responses. In essence, close-ended questions help you collect data that can be used in quantitative analysis.

Researchers will typically use close-ended questions to observe statistical trends and trace how responses change over time. For example, the question “On a scale of extremely satisfied to extremely dissatisfied, how would you rate your recent experience with customer service?” will yield quantifiable answers that reflect the efficiency of your CS department.

While all closed-ended questions offer a limited number of potential responses, they do so to varying degrees. Some types of close-ended questions have only two responses, while others can have many more.

Here are some common close-ended question types you’re likely to come across. 

Multiple choice questions are a popular type of close-ended question. This format allows survey respondents to select an answer that they identify with. You can offer a range of answers, allowing users to intuitively find a response that fits them. 

Here’s an example of how a multiple choice closed-ended question can look: 

Rating scale questions, also known as ordinal questions, ask respondents to choose an answer from a set scale. Typical scales will range from 1-10, while some answers could expand out to between 1-100. 

Here is an example of a rating scale question from a Net Promoter Score® (NPS®) survey:

The Likert scale is a rating scale that measures feelings and opinions using closed-ended questions. Most likely, you’ll have come across the Likert scale in terms of asking, “how much do you agree or disagree” with a certain statement.

Here’s an example of a Likert scale closed-ended question:

Matrix questions are a way to ask respondents to agree or disagree with  several related questions in a row to gain lots of data. These closed-ended questions work well when you need to collect information on various processes, ideas, or opinions with the same scale of answers.

Here’s an example of a matrix question:

Dropdown questions are a simple and effective way of gathering survey responses without respondents feeling overwhelmed by too many answer options. A dropdown box gives a scrollable list of answers. Businesses commonly use this form of closed-ended question when asking for a customer’s birth year or nationality, giving a long list of potential responses.

Here’s an example of a dropdown question:

Most surveys will use demographic questions to build up a personal context for demographic segmentation. Demographic questions give you the option to filter the data you collect on a certain demographic segment—such as married vs. single as illustrated in the example below—to uncover any common preferences or behaviors. You can use demographic responses to create more personalized surveys down the line, helping to improve response rates.

Here is a typical demographic question you’re likely to see:

A ranking question gives respondents a few core selections and then asks them to place them in order of preference or importance. Users can typically drag and drop options to order them or assign them with values that correspond to a scale. The value of a ranking question is that it will provide weighted data; respondents won’t be able to check off all options with the same level of importance.

Here’s an example of a ranking question:

Image questions allow users to select from a range of images to give their feedback. These question types are especially important when the visual aspect of an answer is its focus, such as choosing a favorite design.

Here is an example of an image choice question:

As an alternative form of image choice question, click maps provide additional visual context and data. Businesses will commonly use this question type when assessing different parts of a visual medium, like seeing where their eyes move to on a supermarket shelf or on brand packaging.

Here is an example of a click map question:

Slider questions are a form of rating scale questions where respondents use a slider to indicate their response. As an interactive question, these are useful to break up monotonous clicking content.

Here is an example of a slider question:

Open-ended and close-ended questions provide respondents with different answer formats. In open-ended questions, respondents will have a textbox space where they can type in an answer that may not be included as an answer option. This format allows people to provide personal opinions about a service or product, as well as give extensive feedback to a question. It also allows you to uncover answers you may not have considered but that are important to your customers.

On the other hand, a close-ended question offers a limited pool of answer options that are predetermined by the survey creator. This format provides a list of answers, and the survey respondent will select the one that aligns most closely with their belief.

Open-ended questions give respondents full creative license over their response, which can lead to a varied and random list of answers. Close-ended questions establish a set of answer options that respondents can choose from to best represent their thoughts. 

As respondents all select from the same range of answers, close-ended questions are useful when collecting specific forms of data. Their click-box style allows respondents to engage with questions quickly and efficiently, helping to improve the data collection process.

Here are some leading benefits of close-ended questions.

For companies to produce actionable insights from data analytics, they must first collect as much data as possible on a subject. When it comes to survey data, one problem that companies can run into is a lack of completed responses.

Incomplete surveys could be a sign of a survey that is too long or one that is too laborious to complete. Often, a simple solution to these problems is to increase the number of close-ended questions you ask. If you only rely on open-ended questions, respondents will have to spend more effort completing each question.

Close-ended questions are much faster to complete, helping to increase the likelihood that a respondent finishes your survey. By relying on close-ended questions where possible and limited open-ended ones, you’ll streamline the data collection process and achieve higher survey response rates.

Close-ended survey questions are fantastic when aiming to gather data for quantitative analysis. As each of these question types has a limited number of responses, you can easily gather numerical data on your audience. Every survey response populates a pre-built data response, making it easy to categorize responses into quantifiable data.

The standardized format of close-ended questions helps businesses to apply quantitative analysis techniques, like correlation analysis, descriptive statistics, and inferential statistics. These techniques help researchers identify trends, patterns, and relationships in the data.

Another leading benefit of using close-ended questions is they decrease the amount of effort it takes for survey respondents. Open-ended questions ask more from users as they have to type out a response. On the other hand, close-ended questions simply ask respondents to click on an answer they identify with.

When using the Likert scale for close-ended questions, all your users will simply click on one of between 5-7 answers. This response takes significantly less time than thinking of an answer and typing it out.

By including close-ended questions, you significantly reduce the time it takes for a user to respond to your survey. This approach helps improve survey response rates and enhance data collection.

While close-ended questions are useful for various reasons, they shouldn’t be the only types of questions you use. Finding a mix of closed and open-ended questions will help you quantify your data and then find the qualitative reasoning behind those figures.

However, there are a few scenarios where it’s more useful to focus on close-ended questions.

Although open-ended questions are useful when finding the “how” behind your data, they also require a larger time commitment for all parties. On the respondent side, it takes much longer to fill in. On the researcher's side, open-ended questions require reading through the response and finding useful data within it. 

When dealing with a large respondent pool, it’s more efficient to use close-ended questions where possible. If you have a sample size of 1,000 candidates, reading through a few paragraphs of response for each one would quickly become a mammoth task. However, you can use data analysis tools to gather close-ended question responses quickly in a matter of seconds.

The larger your respondent pool is, the more necessary it becomes to use close-ended question responses. This approach will help you better manage your resources while getting more useful data from the surveys that you send out.

Many customer experience metrics require statistical analysis to help researchers make sense of their data. Close-ended questions provide the numerical data that is most compatible with statistical analysis, making this a useful choice.

For example, if a business is looking to improve its customer experience program, it may decide to run a Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey. This survey uses one single close-ended question to measure customer loyalty and satisfaction. It asks: “How likely would you be to recommend our company to a friend or colleague?” 

Respondents will then be able to click on a response ranging from 0 (not likely to recommend) to 10 (extremely likely to recommend). Based on this data, businesses can work out the number of Promoters (9 or 10 ratings), Passives (7 or 8 ratings), and Detractors (0-6 ratings) their company has.

Businesses can use this initial data to calculate the overall NPS, revealing a figure from -100 to 100, representing customer loyalty. With open-ended questions, a mathematical formula that discerns this information wouldn’t be possible, as the answers could vary so much.

Alternatively, businesses can use close-ended data for a range of statistical analyses:

If your business is racing against the clock, then you’ll need to gather data as quickly as possible. In order to rapidly capture data, you can send out short, specific, and close-ended survey questions. Short surveys of 1-3 questions with close-ended answers will take users a few seconds to fill in.

This approach will lead to a high survey completion rate, generating as much data for your business as quickly as possible. Another example of this in action is using a social media platform to poll a larger audience. On X (formerly Twitter), businesses can instantly publish a poll with a select number of responses to their entire audience.

Launching a poll in this fashion will help expose your question to a wider audience and help increase the speed of data capture. Alternatively, you can launch a private survey via email and send it out to all of your mailing lists. This will equally gather lots of responses but will be less public, avoiding any potential false responses from diminishing the quality of data. 

When it comes to collecting data as rapidly as possible, close-ended questions are the way to go. 

Organizations can specifically tailor close-ended questions to gather certain quantifiable information. This type of question can provide useful data in several fields of customer experience, business operations, and industry research. 

Here are some common examples of close-ended questions you may use.

Customer satisfaction surveys aim to gather data on how customers feel across various touchpoints in their journey with your company. You can use automatic triggers to send out surveys once a customer completes a certain action, like purchasing a product or interacting with your sales team.

A popular CX survey that uses close-ended questions is the Customer Satisfaction Survey (CSAT). The CSAT asks customers to rate their satisfaction with your company on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being very satisfied. This close-ended question format allows you to rapidly generate numerical data for statistical analysis. Gathering this form of data will reveal how satisfied your customers feel with your business. 

Market research allows you to get a more comprehensive insight into customer opinions and decision-making factors. Close-ended questions allow you to ask customers to choose factors that influenced them most or that captured their attention when interacting with your brand. You can then turn these insights into actionable data to enhance your customer experience.

For example, you could ask customers: “Which of the following factors influenced your purchasing decision the most?” You could then list the following potential answers:

Depending on your business, you can tailor the responses to encompass every area where you want to generate data. You can use market research in a range of areas, like ad testing, global surveys, concept testing, messaging testing, idea screening, usage and attitudes, price optimization, and more.

When discussing the power of close-ended questions, we mainly think of how we can use them to enhance the customer experience. But their utility doesn’t stop there. We can also use close-ended questions to track, monitor, and improve the employee experience.

We can ask the following questions using these employee feedback surveys:

Surveys like these can rapidly generate insight into how your employees are feeling. By measuring these satisfaction surveys with closed-ended questions, you can easily model how opinions change over time. This is especially useful when charting the impact of internal changes you make. 

Product feedback moves away from iterating based on gut reactions and helps pinpoint data-driven improvements you can use to improve. Quantifiable close-ended survey response questions help companies to clearly monitor what customers like and want to see next with a product.

Here are some typical product feedback close-ended questions you can use:

A company’s website is often its main touchpoint with customers. Improving it over time by using data-driven insights is a powerful way of positively iterating upon and enhancing your business. After certain events, like purchasing or filling in a response form, you can trigger short, close-ended survey questions to collect data.

Here is a range of website feedback survey questions you can use:

You can always reach out to respondents who leave a negative response and ask for more feedback to help close the feedback loop.

Another powerful use of close-ended questions is to gather information on how attendees perceived an event they attended. As a one-question survey that’s quick and easy to fill out, these typically have high response rates. Using event evaluation surveys, you can gauge how effective your event was and if the participants got what they were expecting from it.

Here are some examples of general event feedback survey questions:

When gathering data, we need to ensure that we ask the right questions without overwhelming our respondents. Sometimes, the best question for the job is close-ended. Using these questions will help to rapidly gather numerical data that’s perfect for statistical analysis.

Try out a free template, or get started with SurveyMonkey today.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter Score, and NPS are trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.