A Guide to Different Types of Assessment Questions

When crafting an assessment for lead generation, it’s important to know which types of questions will be effective. There are various types of assessment questions you can utilize through surveys, interactive assessments, and lead magnets.

Agolix by Assessment Generator is a one-stop shop ready to support you in survey and assessment creation. Our software lets you create interactive online assessments that bring in leads – and keep them engaged!

There’s a place for online assessments in any industry or profession, and we’re excited to share more about why. In this article, we’ll delve into the various types of assessment questions, their purposes, and use cases. Whether you’re looking to gauge knowledge, assess opinions, or drive engagement, understanding the different types of assessment questions can significantly enhance your lead-generation efforts.

What are the Different Types of Assessment Questions?

There are many different types of assessment question formats you can choose from when first creating your assessment. Let’s take a look at some of the most common types below:

• Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) – this type of question, also known as “Options” in assessment terms, lets respondents answer by choosing an item from a list.

An MCQ question type can be helpful if someone isn’t too familiar with taking online assessments. It gives multiple options for the respondent to choose from, and requires less instruction on how to complete the assessment.

This format can be useful for trying to determine preferences or strengths (ie- “Which task sounds the most like one you’d be happy doing?”) They are easy to analyze as well. You can create types for the answers to score to, and even provide feedback in real-time during the assessment when a certain answer is selected if you’d like.

By being a more familiar type of assessment format, these multiple choice questions help you, as the giver, assess the knowledge and comprehension of a client. They provide a quick and easy way to gather information that you can promptly follow up on.

• True/False Questions – these are also known as a Binary question type, similar to a Yes/No question.

True/False questions are also used to test basic understanding and knowledge of a topic. Similar to an MCQ, they create a simplified assessment-taking process because they are very straightforward to answer (“I am happy in my current role – true or false?”)

With this type of question, you can assign point values to different answers, or even utilize something like conditional logic to unlock further questions based on which answer is chosen. 

• Open-ended Questions – this question type is also known as a Narrative question.

A respondent can type free-form text answers to whatever questions are asked.

These open-ended questions are not scored, and can’t be assigned to types due to their ambiguous nature. However, they are incredibly effective in pinpointing the precise areas where assistance is sought by your current clients or new leads, offering valuable insights into their needs and preferences.

This open-ended format encourages critical thinking and greater detail in responses, as well as stimulates greater engagement with your content. As we know – greater engagement with leads tends to help with greater conversion of those leads!

While it may take a bit more time to provide a score or feedback on these questions, when you do – it could be all the more valuable.

• Likert Scale Questions – this kind of question can also be known as a rating question. Respondents will rate items in order of their personal preference. 

This question format measures the attitudes, opinions, preferences, and perceptions of your respondents. In going back to a workplace example, you could ask someone to rate satisfaction with their job tasks in order of most enjoyable to least enjoyable. 

You can assign these questions to type or multi-type assessments and use the answers to create recommendations around professional development and coach them to greater satisfaction.

• Ranking or Ordering Questions – this kind of question has respondents rank or order a list of items based on their preferences.

One way you could utilize this with an online assessment is to have respondents rank product features by preference in a client-facing product management setting. You could also utilize ranking questions to establish key priorities in company decision-making. 

• Image-Based Questions – this type of question can utilize images, graphs, symbols, or anything else that utilizes a visual component.

Image-based questions can help engage those who are more visual learners, and help you gauge the effectiveness of the visuals you create. These questions require analyzing an image and reacting to it that way, or evaluating product and design preferences through images.

Various Factors Influencing Question Selection

When engaging with leads or customers, there are various factors to help you decide on your assessment question selection.

Firstly, who are you trying to reach? Are you hoping to use your online assessment as a lead magnet? What is the audience demographic you’re targeting?

Once you figure out your audience – what will speak to them the most? What types of questions will gather the most information in an unbiased way?

Next, get clear on the objectives of your assessment. What information are you hoping to have after respondents take your assessment? What are you hoping to do with it? That should help inform your question types and styles.

Depending on the complexity of your subject matter, questions could range from image-based to long-form narrative. How will collecting the assessment information affect your analysis of it? Your reporting and feedback?

This leads to the next point – what are the desired insights and data types you’re hoping to have once the assessment is complete? If you want long, in-depth text to analyze for key findings, perhaps you use narrative questions. If you’re hoping to have more easily sortable answers you can bucket and batch, try True/False or Yes/No questions.

Best Practices for Crafting Assessment Questions

Now that you’ve decided what format of question to use, it’s time to think about how to craft those questions.

The two main things you want to aim for are clarity and conciseness. Especially when engaging new leads, being clear and straightforward is key. You want a potential client to come away from any interaction with you – whether through an assessment or not – having felt there was a clear objective to the interaction, and that they know more about your services than they did beforehand.

It’s also important when crafting assessment questions to avoid bias and leading questions. How do you reduce bias in an assessment? An easy first step is to avoid using any positive or negative connotations in the wording of your questions. When you do use language that “leads” an assessment-taker to an answer, you are potentially compromising that data with bias.

Some other tips include not combining too many questions into one (this can lead to confusion and murky answers), and keeping wording simple and straightforward (like we mentioned in best practice #1!) You want to make sure you’re balancing the difficulty levels of your assessment (are the questions complicated to answer? Should you add in some image-based or True/False questions to break up more difficult-to-answer questions?) At Agolix, we also offer assessment validation services for those who want to be absolutely sure their assessment questions are measured accurately and precisely as desired. 

Visual additions can also help with the above – in addition to image-based questions, incorporating your branding (logos, colors, placement) into the assessment as well. This helps to further reinforce your brand, creating a greater chance of memory and engagement for new leads.

Summary

To wrap up, we hope you understand the importance of selecting the right assessment questions when creating an online assessment! And don’t panic – you can play around with the various kinds of questions when creating sample assessments within Agolix! We want this to be an easy process for you, so you can better engage with and serve your clients.

Are you ready to use eye-catching, engaging assessments to manage your lead generation? Get started here today with our wide variety of interactive assessments, quizzes, and surveys.