Asking lots of yes/no questions

teammatt3's picture

He has: 2,102 posts

Joined: Sep 2003

I have a page with about a dozen yes/no type questions. Right now, the layout looks like this:

Can the quiz be saved and resumed later?
[radio button] Yes
[radio button] No

The page is kind of messy, and long, so I'm trying to think of other ways of asking the questions.

Should I use checkboxes instead? I'd have to reword the questions:

[Checkbox] Quiz can be saved and resumed later

That removes two lines, but the wording and use of the checkbox might confuse the user. I could also employ a select box:

Can the quiz be saved and resumed later?
[select yes:no]

What do you think: radio buttons, checkboxes, or selectboxes? Is there another way to get yes/no input from the user?

greg's picture

He has: 1,581 posts

Joined: Nov 2005

Could you float two questions side by side to reduce the overall vertical space used? So two questions next to each other on a horizontal line, and the next horizontal line the radio options under the relevant question.
And put both the yes and no radio selectors on the same horizontal too.

Can the quiz be saved and resumed later?        Is the quiz too hard?
                          o Yes    o No                                                o Yes    o No

I agree the checkbox might confuse some users. Correctly worded questions can avoid that, or put a sentence at the top - Checkboxes: ticked = yes, not ticked = no.

And of course, sometimes there just is no way around these things, and you gotta do what you gotta do.

They have: 15 posts

Joined: Aug 2009

If it's a checkbox you can assume the other answer if the question is asked correctly. Say for example,

Save quiz for later [checkbox]

If it's not checked then it means NO.

I'm thinking more along the lines of a configuration dialog box where you can just check or uncheck certain functions to enable or disable it, respectively.

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

I think the checkboxes would work best too, depending on what the rest of the questions are and how they can be worded.

Although it also sort of depends on the target audience. If you want it to be as straightforward as possible because the audience may be easily confused, greg's idea of floating the radio buttons might be best.

teammatt3's picture

He has: 2,102 posts

Joined: Sep 2003

Thanks for the ideas. I going to try Greg's side by side thing, and if that doesn't work, I'll try out the checkboxes. Thanks Smiling

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