Closed card sorting question

Card sorting question is a highly interactive question that allows your respondents to sort items into categories. The respondents can sort items by dragging and dropping them into respective categories. The items are ranked based on the order of preference.

For example, if you want your respondents to categorize a list of hollywood movies into comedy, horror and action:

• The Conjuring
• Due Date
• Terminator: Dark Fate
• Annabelle
• Hangover
• Avengers: Endgame

The respondents need to drag each and drop into the respective category.

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Card sorting question comes with two answer types - closed and open.

1. Closed card sorting: In closed card sorting question, respondents sort the items into categories that you have defined.
2. Open card sorting: In open card sorting question, survey respondents can define their own categories in order to sort the items.

You can select the answer type based on your survey needs.

To add card sorting question:

• Go to: Login » Surveys (select a survey) » Edit » Workspace.
• Click on the add question button.
• Under advanced question types » ordering, click on card sorting question.


• Card sorting question will appear.


• Click on settings. Under section answer type, select closed.
• You can set the answer display order from the drop-down options
  • Default
  • Ascending
  • Descending
  • Random (with the option to apply a specific number of randomization to overall answer options)
  • Advanced randomization
• Add option: Click here to add answer options.
• Add category: Click here to add categories.
• Edit options in bulk: You can add options in bulk.
• Edit categories in bulk: You can use this option to add long list of categories.
• Validation: When you add questions to a survey, by default, validation option is turned off. When validation option is not enabled, respondents can continue with the survey without selecting answers. If respondents go through all the pages in the survey without selecting answers, the response is still considered as complete. By enabling validation option you can see a drop-down with options - force response and request response.

  Force response option makes a question mandatory/required, as shown in the above image.

  When you select request response, the respondent gets a pop-up in case a question is not answered, requesting to answer the question or continue survey without answering.

Closed card sorting:

Here, the respondents need to drag the options from the left-hand side box to the respective categories on the right-hand side. For example, "The Conjuring" will go into "horror" category and "Hangover" will go into "comedy".

Following are the validations available for the closed card sorting question:

1. Categorize

Description: This option will allow the user to set Exactly, At Least or At Most (N out of M) number of cards the respondent will have to sort or categorize while answering the question.



2. Each Category Contains

Description: This option will allow the user to set Exactly, At Least or At Most (N out of M) number of cards the respondent will have to put in each category while answering the question.



3. Custom Category Validation

Description: This option will allow the respondent to set a customized validation for each category. Following are the steps to set custom category validation for a closed card sorting question:

• Select the Custom Category Validation option from the drop-down menu.
• Click on Set Category Custom Validation link.
• Select Exactly, At Least or At Most (N out of M) number of cards for each category.
• Click on the Save Changes button.

To view the report for card sorting question:

• Go to: Login » Surveys (select a survey) » Analytics » Dashboard.


• Here, you can see the items sorted into given categories - comedy, horror and action .
• You can see the count and percentage of responses received for each item and its average ranking.

• Clustered Bar Chart
• Clustered Column Chart
• Stacked Bar Chart
• Stacker Column Chart

Below mentioned is a Stacker Bar Chart for your reference:

Yes. With QuestionPro, you can download the data in Excel format by clicking on ‘Download’ button as shown below: