Closed-ended questions

First, let’s look at what closed-ended questions are, then we can get on to the examples, and finally, a colossal list of closed-ended questions.

What are closed-ended questions?

Closed-ended questions are questions that can be answered with a short, fixed response. For example, an answer might be “Yes.”, “No.”, “Blue.”, or “The Great Fire of London”.

Closed-ended questions are often used in multiple-choice tests or surveys, especially when computers are used to process the test or survey.

This is because having fixed data points like “Yes.”, “No.”, or “1998”, makes it easier to grade or to gather useful information from fixed data points.  It’s a lot easier to make a graph or chart with questions like “Do you prefer sunsets or sunrises?” rather than “How do sunsets make you feel?”.

The opposite of a closed-ended question is an open-ended question. You can check out our page on open-ended questions to find out more.

Now let’s look at some closed-ended question examples.

Closed-ended question examples

• How many hours of sleep do you get on an average night?
• What shape best represents your personality?
• Can a utopian society exist?

As you can see, closed-ended questions can be mundane or profound. Even though a closed-ended question might beg for more information, it can be answered with a fixed answer (yes/no/parallelogram) or an answer that is on a fixed scale (like how many hours).