Before you get to using the data from the array you better figure out if what you have is what you expect. Consider:

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dump::Streamer;

my @questions;
my %pending;

for (qw(first second)) {
     $pending{answer} = $_;
     push @questions, %pending;
}

Dump \@questions;
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Prints:

$ARRAY1 = [
            'answer',
            'first',
            'answer',
            'second'
          ];
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Probably

my @questions;

for (qw(first second)) {
     my %pending;
     $pending{answer} = $_;
     push @questions, \%pending;
}

Dump \@questions;
[download]

which prints:

$ARRAY1 = [
            { answer => 'first' },
            { answer => 'second' }
          ];
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is closer to what you might expect? Take note of the fact that the declaration for %pending is inside the loop so a new instance of the hash is created each time through the loop.