Types of Questions
- Contingency questions - A question that is answered only if the respondent gives a particular response to a previous question. This avoids asking questions of people that do not apply to them (for example, asking men if they have ever been pregnant).
- Matrix questions - Identical response categories are assigned to multiple questions. The questions are placed one under the other, forming a matrix with response categories along the top and a list of questions down the side. This is an efficient use of page space and respondents’ time.
- Closed ended questions - Respondents’ answers are limited to a fixed set of responses. Most scales are closed ended. Other types of closed ended questions include:
- Yes/no questions - The respondent answers with a "yes" or a "no".
- Multiple choice - The respondent has several option from which to choose.
- Scaled questions - Responses are graded on a continuum (example : rate the appearance of the product on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the most preferred appearance). Examples of types of scales include the Likert scale, semantic differential scale, and rank-order scale (See scale for a complete list of scaling techniques.).
- Open ended questions - No options or predefined categories are suggested. The respondent supplies their own answer without being constrained by a fixed set of possible responses. Examples of types of open ended questions include:
- Completely unstructured - For example, "What is your opinion on questionnaires?"
- Word association - Words are presented and the respondent mentions the first word that comes to mind.
- Sentence completion - Respondents complete an incomplete sentence. For example, "The most important consideration in my decision to buy a new house is . . ."
- Story completion - Respondents complete an incomplete story.
- Picture completion - Respondents fill in an empty conversation balloon.
- Thematic apperception test - Respondents explain a picture or make up a story about what they think is happening in the picture
Read more about this topic: Questionnaire Construction
Famous quotes containing the words types of, types and/or questions:
“... there are two types of happiness and I have chosen that of the murderers. For I am happy. There was a time when I thought I had reached the limit of distress. Beyond that limit, there is a sterile and magnificent happiness.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“Our major universities are now stuck with an army of pedestrian, toadying careerists, Fifties types who wave around Sixties banners to conceal their record of ruthless, beaverlike tunneling to the top.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“Philosophical questions are not by their nature insoluble. They are, indeed, radically different from scientific questions, because they concern the implications and other interrelations of ideas, not the order of physical events; their answers are interpretations instead of factual reports, and their function is to increase not our knowledge of nature, but our understanding of what we know.”
—Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985)