Table of Contents |
Recall that there are two types of data:
Qualitative Data | Quantitative Data |
---|---|
Deals with categories or descriptions Also called Categorical Data |
Deals with numbers and can be measured or perform arithmetic with Also called Numerical Data |
A binomial question is a type of question with only two answer choices. In order to understand what a binomial question is, it helps to break down the word itself. Bi means “two” and nomial means “names”. So a binomial question is a question with two names.
Do you think that this is a qualitative type of question or a quantitative type of question?
A binomial question collects qualitative data because there are two possible responses. It's a question with two categories.
EXAMPLE
The simplest version of a binomial question is yes or no. You might remember this type of question from elementary or middle school:Do you like me? | |||||
(Check Yes or No) | |||||
Yes | No | ||||
Other examples of binomial questions include:
Sometimes things don't neatly fit into two boxes. Nor do they work when the questions have more than two answers or are open-ended questions such as, “How do you feel about the construction of the new baseball diamond located on the north end of town?". It doesn't really work to place something like that into two categories.
Many surveys have a combination of open and closed questions. Closed questions have short, definite, usually multiple choice type answers.
Your Overall Experience | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Excellent | Good | Satisfactory | Fair | Poor | ||
The Teacher | ❍ | ❍ | ❍ | ❍ | ❍ | |
Class Content | ❍ | ❍ | ❍ | ❍ | ❍ | |
The Class as a Whole | ❍ | ❍ | ❍ | ❍ | ❍ | |
What did you like about the class? | ||||||
In the above example, you'll notice that the highlighted pink area shows multiple choices --poor, fair, satisfactory, good and excellent-- and those are your only choices.
Open questions, also called open-ended questions, are subjective. These are areas where someone can click into the field and start to type their comments and/or opinions. These comments are open to the interpretation of the person being surveyed.
The comments are also open to the interpretation of the person conducting the survey when they do the analysis. Usually, they need to be analyzed by a person in order to really get the full effect from it. Oftentimes, in the desire for simplicity, someone will give a question in closed form that really should be an open-ended question.
An example of an open-ended question is highlighted in blue below.
Your Overall Experience | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Excellent | Good | Satisfactory | Fair | Poor | ||
The Teacher | ❍ | ❍ | ❍ | ❍ | ❍ | |
Class Content | ❍ | ❍ | ❍ | ❍ | ❍ | |
The Class as a Whole | ❍ | ❍ | ❍ | ❍ | ❍ | |
What did you like about the class? | ||||||
Source: THIS TUTORIAL WAS AUTHORED BY JONATHAN OSTERS FOR SOPHIA LEARNING. PLEASE SEE OUR TERMS OF USE.