How to Write Good Quiz Questions [Tips and Tricks]
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Online quizzes are fun to take. But with decreasing attention spans, how do you ensure people stick around and complete the entire quiz? This is why it is as important to know how to write good quiz questions as it is to create a good quiz.
Questions are the most important element of a quiz. Anyone can come up with quiz questions, but it takes a lot of trial, effort, practice, and skills to come up with engaging questions that make people want to complete the quiz.
So, do you want to make an interactive quiz that is both fun to take and a sure-shot hit? Here are some of the tips on how to write good quiz questions to help you captivate and thrill your audience.
What Is a Quiz?
The term quiz refers to a test that evaluates a person’s knowledge, or a game consisting of a few questions on a specific topic or group of topics. Quizzes are used for entertainment purposes, academic purposes to examine students’ performance on a particular subject, or to generate qualified prospects for an organization.
A quiz can be of different types, for example, personality quiz, BuzzFeed quiz, trivia quiz, general knowledge quiz, and more!
In addition to this, a quiz can contain several types of questions including multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blanks, true/false, etc. The type of quiz questions you choose to create and how engaging they are will determine the interest of a quiz taker in completing your quiz.
So, let’s learn some tips and tricks on how to write good quiz questions and how to make them more engaging and professional before you create your first quiz!
Tips for Writing Good Quiz Questions
1. Direct and Trending Questions Are the Best
First things first, you need to analyze your target audience and come up with a topic that’s trending, relevant, and informational, such as paper writing. Make sure you include interesting questions based on your chosen topic. The questions you create should support your objective.
Keep your question concise and try to omit any unnecessary information. Your audience should get exactly what you’ve promised them once they opt to take your quiz.
2. 7 to 10 Questions Is the Sweet Spot
Quizzes are inherently viral in nature and they’re extremely fun to take. But all of this depends on the number and types of questions you choose to include in your interactive quiz.
You need to make sure that you include just the right number of questions and provide insightful results at the end. It is suggested that you aim for at least 7-10 questions in your quiz. Less than 7 questions can make the quiz superficial and more than 10 questions can make the quiz takers give up before the quiz is even done.
3. Mind the Question Length
Keep your questions short and simple. Ideally, your question should be 6-10 words only. Short questions are practical and will keep quiz takers engrossed in your quiz. Reading long questions, on the other hand, can be a bit boring for the audience, and will ultimately make them lose interest.
4. Place Your Questions Systematically
To capture your audience’s attention, place your most exciting questions in the beginning. This will develop an interest in your quiz takers and motivate them to attempt the questions that come further.
Questions that are difficult to answer and require more thought should be placed in the middle to keep them engaged and committed to your quiz. And finally, ask the most intriguing question of your quiz at the end to finish it off with a bang.
5. Use Simple Vocabulary
People take quizzes for fun. Don’t make your quiz so hard that they start losing interest.
If you write questions with difficult words, the participants will spend more time racking their brains instead of enjoying your quiz, and the chances of them dropping out before the quiz ends will increase significantly.
Hence, it is important that you use simple vocabulary, and crisp and engaging sentences to make your quiz interesting enough.
6. Have a Consistent Number of Answers
Make sure you aim for 3 to 4 answers for each question. Unless and until you have a specific reason to change the number of answers like in the case of a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ answer, each question should have an equal number of answers.
Also, When you’re using an essay writing service with native writers or writing the answers, make sure all the answers are unique and different from each other, covering the full spectrum of options available.
7. Use Images With Questions and Answers
It is recommended to include pictures with your questions or answers. This is because people are more likely to get attracted to exciting graphics rather than simple content. Questions with image answers will make your quiz more appealing, entertaining, and interactive.
8. Peer-Review Your Questions
After you are done creating your quiz questions, share them with someone for review. Let others take a look and provide some objective, unbiased feedback. Acknowledge the relevant suggestions and make improvements accordingly.
Head to our blog on the types of questions an interesting quiz includes to get a better understanding of what we’ve discussed so far!
Components of a Good Quiz Question
1. It Should Have a Purpose
A good quiz question without a purpose and relevance has no value. The purpose helps evaluate the quality of a question against some set benchmarks. A good quiz question can seek both originality and specificity. Before drafting a question, you need to be familiar with the topic on which you are creating your quiz.
2. It Should Stimulate Thinking
Based on the Socratic model of questioning, if a quiz question is carefully structured, then it guides the audience towards understanding the concept wherein they can slow down and examine their thinking processes. It allows learners to think through and recall the concepts taught. On the other hand, it develops a curiosity in the audience to attempt the next question.
3. It Should Be One-Dimensional
A single-dimensional question focuses on only one idea or concept at a time. If there are multiple ideas to consider, then it is better to split them into multiple questions.
For example, Which flagship Apple or Samsung phone should you buy and why? is a multi-dimensional question that requires your audience to examine two things at a time. It is therefore recommended to divide it into two different questions for better understanding, i.e. Which flagship Apple or Samsung phone should you buy? And Why should you buy an Apple/Samsung phone?
4. It Should Contain an Instruction Word or Phrase
An instruction word or phrase is a simple element of your quiz question that indicates how you’re supposed to approach the concept. Every question has a definite concept behind it and it should have an actionable or instructional word that provokes a simple response from a respondent. As a result, the audience can understand what the question demands and how they are expected to answer. For example, a subtext saying ‘Choose the correct option.’
That’s all about the components of a good quiz question. Interestingly, nowadays you do not have to rely on manual efforts for creating quiz questions. You can make use of Outgrow’s interactive quiz maker tool that offers professional premade templates with some thrilling quiz questions on various topics.
Interactive Trivia Quiz Questions
A trivia quiz can be fun and engaging. Interactive content such as trivia quizzes gives real-time results and engages viewers more than static content.
But in order to create an interesting quiz, the first important thing is to create a list of exciting trivia questions. We have curated a comprehensive list of trivia questions from different categories which you can explore and include in your quiz to make it more interactive and engaging.
So, click here to take a look and choose from our wide variety of trivia questions for your upcoming trivia quiz!
How to Create a Quiz on Outgrow?
Creating a quiz can be a tedious task! But with Outgrow, you can create an online interactive quiz in just a few minutes by following these simple steps:
- Log in to your quiz maker. If you haven’t created an account yet, then sign up for Outgrow’s 7-day free trial!
- Once you’ve logged in, you can select from our wide range of templates or create your quiz from scratch. You can add new questions or customize the existing ones, set up the display features, title, and background, and change the text, font, colors, etc.
- Optimize the results as per your requirements, set up the mapping as per your workflow, and add graphics to make your quiz more interactive and fun.
- After you’re done with the changes, you can make your quiz live. You can also embed your quiz on your website, landing pages, and email newsletters, or promote it via a direct URL.
Conclusion
And that’s how you create interactive quiz questions for your quiz! We are bombarded with content wherever we go and therefore it becomes difficult to stand out from the crowd. That’s why it is important to create and incorporate interactive content for a delightful and unique customer experience.
We hope that this blog has given you some intuitive tips and tricks on how to write good quiz questions.
Let us know in the comments section below if you have any questions or if you want to add more tips for creating some amazing quiz questions. And if you want to try out some cool quiz templates for free, sign up on Outgrow.