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Research design: Types of question

There are many different types of question you can use to get the information you need. Generally, the questions will either be open or closed. An open question allows the respondent to use their own words to answer (“What do you think are the main causes of racism?”), whilst a closed question gives pre-defined options (“Which of the following do you think are the main causes of racism: a, b, c, d”). Some advantages and disadvantages of each are in the table below:

Open questions Closed questions
Gets “rich” qualitative data Elicits quantitative data
Encourages thought and freedom of expression Can encourage ‘mindless’ replies
May discourage responses from less literate respondents Are easy for all literacy levels to respond to
Takes longer to answer and may put some people off Are quick to answer and may improve your response rate
Are more difficult to analyse; responses can be easily misinterpreted Are easy to ‘code’ and analyse
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PILOT Questionnaire Design by Marion Kelt, GCU is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Based on a work at http://www.bath.ac.uk/students/support/academic/projects/Questionnaire.pdf