What Is Closed-Ended Question?
A question with a fixed set of answer choices the respondent picks from — multiple choice, yes/no, or a rating scale — rather than a free-text answer.
A closed-ended question limits respondents to a predefined set of answers: multiple choice, yes/no, a Likert scale, a ranking, or a rating. Because every possible answer is already known in advance, responses are quantifiable the moment they’re collected — no interpretation needed to turn them into a chart.
That’s the tradeoff: closed-ended questions are fast to answer and easy to analyze at scale, but they can only surface answers the question-writer already thought to include. If the real reason behind an opinion doesn’t fit one of the options, it gets flattened into “Other” or lost entirely.
Most well-designed surveys mix closed-ended questions (for the metrics you need to track and compare over time) with a smaller number of open-ended questions (for the nuance a fixed list can’t capture).
Example
How did you hear about us?
- Search engine
- Social media
- Referral
- Advertisement
- Other
Every answer falls into one of the choices, so the results can be counted directly.
Sources
- Dillman, D. A., Smyth, J. D., & Christian, L. M. (2014). Internet, Phone, Mail, and Mixed-Mode Surveys: The Tailored Design Method (4th ed.). John Wiley & Sons.
How to Use Closed-Ended Questions in SurveyRock
SurveyRock supports single- and multi-select multiple choice, rating and slider questions, matrix/grid questions, and ranking questions — the full closed-ended toolkit — with response dashboards that chart the distribution automatically as answers come in.