Multiple choice questions are among the most popular survey question types. Their strength lies in simplicity, appealing to both surveyors and respondents. They provide an intuitive, structured way to gather vast amounts of information quickly. You can include them in your surveys to gather clear, controlled responses, allowing you to analyze survey data effectively and make informed decisions faster.
However, this method has several types and nuances, making it challenging to create the right questions while avoiding pitfalls. That’s why understanding each type is essential for knowing how, when, and where to use it effectively.
Explore this ultimate guide to multiple choice questions for surveys. We will discuss what they are, their types, best practices for using them, and how to avoid common mistakes, along with practical multiple choice question samples.
Understanding multiple choice questions
Multiple choice questions are simply questions with a predetermined number of answers to select from, which the surveyors provide. The questions have two or more answers, from which the respondent can choose one or more, as provided by the survey creator.
You’d be wondering why this question type is so popular among survey makers. Well, it’s because they are easy for people to answer, allowing you to gain more responses. Plus, they give you neat and clean data that’s easy to analyze.
For instance, imagine you’re trying to figure out people’s favorite ice cream flavors. Won’t it be easier to provide a list of options (vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, etc.) that you can easily compare than an open-ended question like, “What’s your favorite ice cream?” that would give you all sorts of difficult-to-analyze responses? That’s the power of multiple choice questions.
That’s not all. Multiple choice questions are versatile enough to form different types of survey questions for various scenarios, including but not limited to
- Market research, where you can conduct surveys like consumer trends and preferences, buying behavior, brand awareness, etc., to drive data-driven marketing and sales campaigns
- User experience: This is where you can gauge the existing users’ level of satisfaction and overall experience with your products/services
- Employee satisfaction or engagement, with surveys regarding their job experience, workload expectations, working conditions, company culture, career growth, and overall job satisfaction
- Event feedback is used to gain insights for improvement through surveys like organization, scheduling, subject relevance, speaker eminence, and overall event quality.
- Public polls are a way to gather public opinion regarding social and political issues, public health, economic expectations, educational policies, climate change, etc.
Heads up! Multiple choice vs. multi-select
Before we dive too deeply into this topic, here’s a quick clarification about two terms that are sometimes used interchangeably: multiple choice and multi-select. While many of us consider multiple choice questions to be those in which multiple answers are presented, this doesn’t necessarily mean that participants can choose multiple answers. So, for the purposes of this reference, let’s keep it clear:
- Multiple choice questions: These questions are accompanied by one or more answer options (A, B, C, D).
- Multi-select or multi-answer questions: In these questions, one or more answer options can be selected simultaneously (A, B & D, etc.).
Make sense? Then let’s go! 😉
Types of multiple choice questions
As evident in the above use cases, multiple choice questions offer immense flexibility. Thanks to their different types and possible variations, you can create versatile surveys that delight your respondents.
Based on the ability to choose one or more options, multiple choice questions can be divided into two principal categories: Single-answer and multiple-answer questions. Plus, each type has several useful variations, as we will discuss below with multiple choice question samples for better understanding.
Single-Select Questions
These questions allow respondents to select one and only one best option. They are close-ended questions that provide respondents with a predefined set of options, including those they might be unaware of. Each option in the list is usually accompanied by a radio button, indicating that you can only select one. If the respondent selects one option and then changes their choice by choosing another, the previously selected option will be automatically de-selected.
They work well for dichotomous questions with two mutually exclusive choices: yes/no, true/false, and agree/disagree. This type also works best for measuring primary preferences or gathering opinions and demographic information.
Example #1 (Multiple choice)
Example #2 (Multiple Choice)
Example #3 (Dichotomous)
Apart from these simple questions, you can include several other variations of this type to make your surveys way more interesting:
Numeric/Text Rating Scale Multiple Choice Questions
This is a visually appealing variation to the mundane text-based options. It uses numerical (e.g., 1 to 5 or 0 to 10) or descriptive ratings (e.g., poor to excellent) that respondents can select using radio buttons or boxes, where each represents an option. You can use it to measure satisfaction, quality, and performance of your products or services.
One of the most employed rating scales is the Likert scale. It asks the respondents to indicate their level of agreement or disagreement through 5 to 7 pre-defined options (e.g., strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree).
Dropdown Menu Multiple Choice Questions
Another variant is the dropdown, where you can present your options as a list of dropdown menus. Respondents click the dropdown symbol to open a list from which they can select their preferred option.
While it’s recommended that all the options be visible to the respondent, on some occasions, it is impractical to show the entire list, especially when it’s too lengthy, such as when asking the respondents about their country of residence. At such times, you can use this format to present choices as a scrollable list, making the question easy to answer and your survey concise.
Smiley/Star Rating Multiple Choice Questions
With a star or smiley rating question, a respondent can express his satisfaction or dissatisfaction using smileys or stars. It may or may not be accompanied by supporting text. You can assign a weight or score to each symbol on the scale, which allows you to calculate the weighted average at the end of the survey.
The star rating is popular with surveyors and respondents since it is super easy and quick to use. You can use it to quickly gather information regarding whether your customer likes your product/service. Plus, you can create a grid of stars to represent multiple criteria, such as design, look, usability, relevance, worth money spent, etc.
Thumbs Up/Down Multiple Choice Questions
This alternative allows you to ask a dichotomous question to the respondent to know their opinion with a binary answer. It uses two images of upward and downward thumbs to form the options part of the question. For instance, the respondent can quickly click on one of the images to express their likes/dislikes regarding the product/service they use.
Multi-Select Questions
Contrary to a single-answer question, in which the respondent is forced to choose a single option, multi-select questions allow participants to choose more than one answer.
Also called multiple-answer questions, you can use this type to allow respondents to select one or more responses to a single question. The options are typically accompanied by checkboxes denoting that the respondent can select multiple options. As a survey designer, you can make the order of the choices static (non-permuted) or dynamic (permuted). With the permuted type, the order of the choices will be different for different respondents, eliminating selection bias.
Here are a few examples of multiple choice questions formed using this question type for various scenarios:
Example #1 (Multiple selection)
Example #2 (Multi-select with “Other” option)
Example #3 (Multi-select with “None of the above” option)
Following are some variations of multi-answer questions to use in your surveys:
Multi-Select List Box Multi Choice Questions
It’s similar to the dropdown list variant in the single-answer questions. The difference, however, is that the options are displayed in a scrollable list box, and respondents can select multiple options from the list instead of just one. You can use it to keep your survey design tidy while preventing the respondents from getting overwhelmed.
Example:
Matrix/Grid Multiple Choice Questions
While technically not a multi-answer question, you can use it to form a single question with multiple responses, one or more for each criterion related to the question. It is especially useful when you have several questions with the same responses (e.g., multiple criteria with the same rating scale).
You can create an option grid either with radio buttons or checkboxes for respondents to select options against each criterion depending on whether you want one or more selections for each criterion.
The two elements of the matrix-styled question are:
- rows, representing the question/criteria and
- columns, representing the rating or other values.
The following examples will make it clearer:
Example #1 (Rating Radio Grid): In this example, the respondent can select only one option (excellent, good, poor, or inferior) for each predefined criterion.
Example #2 (Checkbox Grid): In this example, respondents can choose more than one option (8 am, 9 am, 10 am, 11 am) for each day mentioned.
Best practices for creating multiple choice questions
While respondents can quickly answer multiple choice questions with a few clicks, creating them is an entirely different story. If, as a creator, you don’t form them carefully by following survey design best practices, it could lead to a below-average survey with few respondents.
That’s why you should use the following essential tips to design effective multiple choice questions:
Use clear and concise wording
Clear language is important in surveys. Using complex words, jargon, abbreviations, and confusing questions/statements could detract respondents to the point of abandonment.
To make surveys engaging, use simple and unambiguous language with short, focused statements. Avoid jargon, technical terms, and complex sentences to maintain readability. For example:
- Double-Negative (Confusing): Do you disagree that our customer service is not helpful?
- Clear: Rate the quality of our customer service. (Numeric/Star Rating)
Avoid bias and leading questions
Using words with strong emotions or non-specific meanings can cause response bias, negatively affecting survey outcomes. For instance, leading questions with certain words or phrases can result in respondents answering in a fixed manner, which you must avoid at all costs. Instead, form your questions objectively and avoid any suggestive wording. Consider the following example:
Leading: Don’t you agree that our new product design is much better than the old one?
Unbiased: How would you compare our new product design to the old one? (Options: Better, No change, Worse)
Provide balanced answer options
Missing a possible option that respondents prefer is too irritating for them to continue the survey. Also, not providing an option to skip specific questions (e.g., “prefer not to answer”) can motivate them to skip the survey itself.
To prevent this, include all plausible responses (e.g., “other” and “none of the above” options), even if they seem unlikely or unnecessary. Ensure all options are mutually exclusive (no overlapping) to avoid confusion.
Randomize answer order
People often select the first option without considering other options, producing order bias. You can solve this issue by randomly ordering the options to avoid the same response from several respondents.
You can even randomize the order of questions since the initial questions in a particular order can influence the responses to the subsequent questions
Common mistakes to avoid when writing multiple choice questions
To ensure that your surveys perform well, you need to avoid the following common mistakes survey designers often make:
Overlapping answer options
Including options with the same or ambiguous meaning (overlapping) will confuse the respondents and scramble your survey outcomes. Form unambiguous, mutually exclusive options that respondents can select from without any uncertainty.
For instance:
Overlapping Options: What is your age range? (18-25, 25-35, 35-45, 45-60)
Correct Options: 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-60
Double-Barreled questions
Sometimes, to make the survey concise, survey makers ask two unrelated questions in a single question, called a double-barreled question. Such questions need to be clarified for the respondents as well as produce invalid survey results. To avoid this, divide the question into two separate questions.
For example:
Double-Barreled: How satisfied are you with our product’s price and quality?
Solution: Since price and quality are different aspects, form two separate questions to fix this issue.
Tools and resources for creating multiple choice questions
Since multiple choice questions provide versatile and flexible ways to create attention-grabbing surveys, they are indispensable to survey makers.
Thanks to modern survey creation tools, creating engaging, mobile-friendly surveys with multiple choice questions has never been easier. Platforms like Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, Sogolytics, etc., offer user-friendly interfaces to design and deploy surveys quickly. Whether you’re a novice or a pro in creating surveys, these tools can help you build surveys that respondents love to take and actually complete.
For those looking to level up their survey game, Sogolytics stands out with its AI-assisted question creation, ready-to-use templates, advanced branching logic, and intuitive UI. Its benefits go beyond design, with multi-channel distribution, real-time analytics, and award-winning reporting tools.
That’s not all. In addition to the types of survey questions multiple choice formats offer that we discussed above, Sogolytics has a large arsenal of question types, including NPS (Net Promoter® Score), rating scales, multiple drop-down, multiple matrix questions, drill-down, numerical allocation, and more.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. To explore more options and create click-worthy surveys, contact our experts at Sogolytics for valuable guidance.
Multiple choice questions: The heart of surveys
Multiple choice questions are undoubtedly vital elements of successful surveys. Following the best practices we’ve discussed—clarity, balance, and avoiding bias—will help you craft questions that result in accurate, actionable data.
Remember, with well-designed multiple choice questions, you don’t just receive responses; rather, you gain valuable insights that drive informed decisions. Keep your surveys clear, concise, and tidy to receive maximum completed responses. Experiment with different types of multiple choice questions to keep your surveys engaging and effective.
Gain deeper insights and become an expert at using multiple choice questions with Sogolytics. Our experienced team will help you at every step of creating optimized surveys to drive your data-based research in the right direction.
[Note: The images of all the examples/samples of multiple choice questions presented in this article are created using the Sogolytics Online Survey Design Tool.]
