Close-ended questions: When to use them and why

Close-ended questions are a critical part of a researcher’s toolbox, especially if they want to pinpoint trends over time. From multiple-choice questions to ranking questions, from market research to employee surveys, closed-ended survey questions are all about gathering specific data for analysis.

Let’s dive into what you need to know about close-ended questions, including why they’re important, what close-ended question types are most common, and how you can use them.  

Closed-ended questions, also known as close-ended questions or quantitative questions, are questions with pre-determined answer options.

Whether those answer options are true/false, yes/no, or a rating scale from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree,” close-ended questions don’t leave room for “gray area” results. Respondents choose the answer that most closely matches their opinion without necessarily expressing themselves in their own words.

Researchers use close-ended survey questions to spot statistical trends and track how responses change over time. That’s because closed-ended questions collect quantitative data that can be easily compared and analyzed. 

For example, let’s say you asked your customers this closed-ended question:

“On a scale of extremely satisfied to extremely dissatisfied, how would you rate your recent experience with our customer service?” 

With a closed-ended scale of answer options, you can get a numerical measurement of how your customer service team is doing and use that as a baseline to improve.

Whether you're looking to conduct market research, improve customer satisfaction, or boost employee engagement, you likely need to ask some closed-ended survey questions to get quantitative data.

There are many question types that fall under the umbrella of closed-ended questions—and they can be useful in different ways. 

Let’s walk through some common close-ended question types and how they might be used in specific survey examples. 

Multiple-choice questions are a popular type of close-ended question that allows survey respondents to select an answer from a list of choices. They’re a low-effort way for respondents to indicate everything from their demographics to their opinions or habits.

Multiple choice questions are often the foundation of Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) surveys, where customers are asked to rate their satisfaction with a company, product, or experience. 

Here’s an example of how this multiple choice closed-ended question might look in a CSAT survey: 

This close-ended question format gives you numerical data for statistical analysis—revealing how satisfied your customers are with your product. 

Close-ended questions that ask respondents to choose from a set scale of answer options are called rating scale questions, or ordinal questions. The range of a rating scale can vary (0 to 100, 1 to 10, etc.), and respondents select the number that most accurately represents their opinion.

Customer experience (CX) metrics tend to rely on close-ended rating scale questions. For example, the Net Promoter Score (NPS®) question uses a rating scale to measure customer loyalty or, in the case of employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS), employee satisfaction.  

Here’s how this rating scale question appears in an NPS survey: