Closed Question

A closed question is a type of question posed by researchers to participants in research projects that specifies the parameters within which participants can frame their answers. Closed questions typically provide possible responses in the questions, request specific facts or information from interviewees or survey respondents, or may even limit responses to “yes” or “no.” Closed questions are associated with structured interview formats and spoken and written questionnaires, and they assume that people's experiences may be reduced to facts that can be coded with preestablished researcher-generated categories. In contrast to open-ended questions, which are designed to give participants freedom to initiate topics within research settings, closed questions are worded to eliminate possibilities for participants to introduce their own topics or provide answers that do not fit the researcher's coding schemes. Such questions are frequently used in a way that formulates the human subject as passive, responding to a neutral researcher working to elicit specific facts concerning research topics.

Closed questions are commonly used in structured interviews and focus groups, and they are especially suited to research projects in which the same information must be obtained from a large number of participants. Given that closed questions are widely used as a means of eliciting data in standardized survey interviews and rely on quantitative methods of data analysis, close attention has been paid to methodological aspects of question formulation and how questions are sequenced and administered by interviewers.

David Stewart and colleagues identified two forms of closed questions: explicit and implicit. In explicit closed questions, interviewees are provided with possible responses from which they must select an answer. The following are examples:

• Do you agree or disagree with the proposal that x should be implemented?
• How frequently have you attended meetings about x: never, 1 or 2 times, 3 or 4 times, 5 times or more?
• How would your rate the process of information sharing undertaken with respect to the implementation of x on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is very poor and 5 is excellent?

Implicit closed questions include an assumption about the possible range of responses in the questions without providing a specific response. For example, in response to the following questions, interviewees can provide multiple answers that are not included in the questions:

• How many weeks do you intend to travel overseas this year?
• With what airline will you fly?

Some qualitative researchers have critiqued the use of closed questions as a method of generating information about people's lived experiences, arguing that such questions limit the ability of research participants to provide rich descriptions and relevant information concerning their lives. Other methodologists argue that a judicious mix of both closed and open-ended questions can be used to generate useful data for social research. How qualitative researchers use closed questions in their work largely depends on the epistemological and theoretical assumptions underlying the research design of a given study.