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.
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.
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