website design - Multiple choice with Yes, No and 'No answer'

I am working on a Quiz Application for Multiple Choice question. Instead of normal Multiple Choice Questions with the two answers yes and no. I am working on one that allows a user to abstain to a question and to give no answer. It should always be possible to select 'no Answer' even after selecting Yes or No.

I was thinking of a Toggle with 3 states:

• a green tick for Yes/Right


• a red cross for No/Wrong


• a text 'nA' for no Answer

Is it a good idea to mix text with icons?

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Update

Context

The application is a web based application. The control panel will be available only on computers and will be used by teachers to create a quiz for their students. This test is just for the teacher to see where students may have problem with understanding, and for students to see what they already know and what not. It will be possible to ask Single-Choice questions (radio buttons) and Multiple-Choice Questions. As mentioned the Multiple-Choice questions have three states Yes/Right, No/Wrong and 'no Answer'. The reason for 'no Answer' is that a correct answer leads to +1 points, a wrong to -1 points and 'no Answer' will get 0 points. The students, who answer the questions, will be able to do so on any device like Smartphones, Tablets or even their Laptops.

The thing with just using text like yes, no, and n/A as Nikita Prokopov mentions, is that the teacher has to ask the questions, so that they can logically be answered with Yes and No, so that the students won't get too confused with the question and answer possibilities. For instance:

Which countries border on Switzerland? Yes, Germany borders on Switzerland

When I would just use Yes and No then the teacher, who creates the questions, has to check that they can be answered with Yes or No, which in my opinion should not be the case. The same question could be asked without using the yes/no pattern. For instance:

These countries border on Switzerland. then the answer should be True, Germany borders on Switzerland

So that's why I came up with the icon, text mixture.

Answer

Answering your question, yes, it’s absolutely ok.

But, with such a short labels, you could use text instead of pictures:

[n/a] Yes  No

 n/a [Yes] No

 n/a  Yes [No]

Text is easier to understand than icons, and different understanding are less likely for text. For me, green tick and red cross mean if question was answered correct or not, not the answer itself.

Guessing that [n/a] is a default state, I placed it at the front, so it will be easier to find when revising your answers, looking for “what else should I answer”.

Also remember, that the bigger the button is, the easier it is to click on it, so do not try to save space before it’s really a problem.