What are the advantages and disadvantages of closed-ended questions?

A closed-ended questions are those questions for which the participants are provided with options from which to choose a response.

Advantages of Closed Ended Questions

  1. It is easy to calculate percentages and other hard statistical data over the whole group or over any subgroup of participants.
  2. Modern scanners and computers make it possible to administer, tabulate, and perform preliminary analysis in a matter of days.
  3. It easier to track opinion over time by administering the same questionnaire to different but similar participant groups at regular intervals.
  4. These questions allow the researcher to filter out useless or extreme answers that might occur in an open format question.

Disadvantages of Closed Ended Questions

  1. There needs to be sufficient choices to fully cover the range of answers.
  2. It is difficult to understand and interpret the closed questions.

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