A closed question has predefined answers such as Yes/No, a list of options, a numeric answer or a Likert scale. Closed questions are useful once one has a clear hypothesis or question as they can be distributed to large numbers of people to produce quantitative data with relatively easy data collation and analysis including statistics. In a questionnaire it is often useful to intersperse closed questions with open questions inviting comments, clarification or additional information, as these will yield qualitative data to complement the quantitative statistics.
Used in glossary entries: open questions