Each of the six questions below shows up tens of thousands of times a month in search. Plain-language answers, written for impact practitioners who have to design a survey by next week. Cross-references point to the relevant section of the page below each answer.
Is a survey qualitative or quantitative?
A survey is neither qualitative nor quantitative on its own. The question types decide. A survey of Likert ratings and yes/no answers is quantitative. A survey of open-ended prompts is qualitative.
Most real surveys are mixed: a few closed-ended questions for the numbers, a few open-ended ones for the why. The useful question is not which kind, but what you are trying to learn, and the mix follows from there. Section 04 above shows three program shapes with three different mixes.
What is a qualitative survey?
A qualitative survey is one designed to collect open-ended written responses, in the respondent's own words. The questions are prompts: describe a moment, tell us what happened, walk us through your decision. The data is text.
The work of analysis is reading across the responses to find recurring themes and to pull representative quotes. Qualitative surveys answer the why behind a number that another survey would only count.
What is a quantitative survey?
A quantitative survey is one designed to produce numbers and categories. It uses fixed-option questions: rate this on a 5-point scale, choose one, yes or no. The data can be aggregated, averaged, compared across cohorts, and charted.
A quantitative survey is what most funder reports run on. The limit is that it tells you how much something changed, not why. Pairing the closed-ended items with open-ended follow-ups closes that gap.
Is a questionnaire qualitative or quantitative?
A questionnaire is the form. The questions on the form decide whether the data is qualitative or quantitative. A questionnaire with Likert scales and multiple choice produces quantitative data. One with open-ended prompts produces qualitative data.
Most program-evaluation questionnaires include both, which makes them mixed-method instruments. The terms survey and questionnaire are often used interchangeably; the questionnaire is what you build, the survey is the whole process.
Is the Likert scale qualitative or quantitative?
The Likert scale is quantitative. It captures perception (agreement, confidence, satisfaction), but the answer comes back as a number on an ordered scale: 1 through 5, or 1 through 7. Numbers can be averaged, charted, and compared across groups.
The confusion comes from what the scale measures (a feeling) being mistaken for the format of the data (a number). If you also want the language behind the rating, you pair the Likert with an open-ended follow-up.
Can a survey be both qualitative and quantitative?
Yes, and most strong surveys are. Pair every closed-ended question on a topic with an open-ended follow-up on the same topic. The closed gives you the number you can compare across the cohort. The open gives you the language behind the number.
When the analysis joins the two at the respondent, you get something neither one produces alone: which kinds of stories show up at high scores, and which show up at low scores. Section 08 below walks through a workforce-training example showing exactly this kind of pairing.
Four neighboring terms, kept distinct
Useful when readers arrive from a query that conflates these.
Survey vs questionnaire
A questionnaire is the form, the set of written questions. A survey is the whole process: designing, distributing, collecting, and analyzing. Most people use the words interchangeably, and that is fine in casual use.
Open-ended vs qualitative
Open-ended is about the response format (no fixed choices). Qualitative is about the kind of evidence (texture, reasoning). Most open-ended responses are qualitative, but a free-text field that asks for a number is still open-ended in format and quantitative in content.
Closed-ended vs quantitative
Closed-ended is about the response format (fixed choices). Quantitative is about the kind of data (countable). Closed-ended questions almost always produce quantitative data: rating scales, multiple choice, yes/no, ranked lists.
Mixed-method vs multi-method
Mixed-method means combining qualitative and quantitative data on the same topic, joined at the respondent. Multi-method means using more than one collection method (survey plus interview, say). A survey can be mixed-method on its own; multi-method usually requires multiple instruments.
