Here are some of the best questions for an API Developers survey about API Security, plus practical tips on how to create them. You can generate a conversational survey on this topic in seconds with Specific—no guesswork or manual scripting needed.
Best open-ended questions for API developers survey about API security
Open-ended questions are essential when you want richer insights, not just numbers. They draw out experience, context, and real-world stories—great for surfacing unknown issues or creative solutions. Use them to explore pain points, best practices, or security attitudes among API developers. Here are our top 10 picks:
What are the most common API security challenges you face in your day-to-day work?
Can you describe an incident where an API vulnerability led to a security concern or breach in your environment?
How do you currently monitor and detect suspicious activity in your APIs?
What improvements would you like to see in your organization’s API security practices?
How does your team prioritize API security issues compared to other types of software vulnerabilities?
Which tools or solutions have you found especially effective—or surprisingly ineffective—for protecting APIs?
What steps do you take to document and manage your API inventory?
What is your main concern when exposing APIs to third-party developers or clients?
How has the increased use of AI in your stack changed your API security considerations?
What advice would you give to other API developers looking to improve security in their development lifecycle?
Open questions like these encourage honest stories and specifics—critical in a field where 84% of security professionals reported at least one API security incident last year, and where gaps in detection remain glaring. [1][4]
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for API developers survey about API security
Single-select multiple-choice questions make it easy to quantify responses and compare trends. They’re especially useful as icebreakers or whenever you need structured, quickly-analyzed feedback. Many respondents find it easier to pick from several relevant choices before you dig deeper with a followup.
Question: Which of the following is your team's biggest challenge regarding API security?
Lack of visibility into APIs
Inadequate security tools
Difficulty with real-time attack detection
Limited budget/resources
Other
Question: How many API-related security incidents has your organization experienced in the past year?
None
1-2
3-4
5 or more
Question: What best describes your ability to detect and prevent attacks at the API layer?
Very effective (prevent over 75% of attacks)
Somewhat effective (25-75%)
Not very effective (less than 25%)
We struggle to detect or prevent attacks
When to followup with "why?" Often, the most revealing feedback comes after someone picks an option. Always consider a follow-up like, “Why did you choose this?” For example, if someone answers “Difficulty with real-time attack detection”, ask, “Can you share why this is challenging with your current tools?”—this turns numbers into actionable insights.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? Always add “Other” when your listed options might not cover every situation. This invites new perspectives—and if followed up with “Please specify,” you’ll often discover hidden issues or innovative workarounds that structured choices miss.
Using NPS in API developer surveys about API security
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) question, typically asked as “How likely are you to recommend [product/team/practice] to a friend or colleague?”, adapts well for API security. It gauges satisfaction and trust, surfacing both promoters and detractors. This helps organizations track overall confidence in their security posture and identify weak spots over time. If most developers are detractors, you might face systemic risk that deserves attention. You can build an NPS survey for API security in just a few clicks.
The power of follow-up questions
Automated follow-up questions turn static surveys into living conversations. This is especially powerful with API security surveys—it’s the difference between a vague sentence and a fully-understood problem. Specific’s conversational AI listens, probes, and clarifies: if an API developer gives a high-level reply, the system dynamically asks for details, concrete examples, or root causes.
Follow-ups save countless hours that’d otherwise go to manual email back-and-forth. With real-time context, the conversation feels organic and natural.
API developer: “We struggle with unexpected API vulnerabilities.”
AI follow-up: “Can you give an example of a vulnerability that surprised your team and how you found it?”
How many followups to ask? Two or three is usually enough to uncover the root issue. Always allow respondents to skip to the next question once they’ve given enough detail—Specific lets you configure this, optimizing for both depth and respect for the respondent’s time.
This makes it a conversational survey—the experience feels more like a dialogue than a form, boosting both engagement and clarity of responses.
AI analysis, full context, summaries on demand: Even with lots of unstructured responses, AI-powered response analysis makes summarizing easy. You can chat with your survey’s data for fast insights—no slow manual coding or spreadsheet wrangling.
Conversational surveys with automated followups are still a fresh concept—try generating a survey to see just how much deeper your insights can go.
How to write a prompt for GPT to generate great API security survey questions
Sometimes you want inspiration or help from AI to spark new ideas for your survey. Here’s how to use prompt engineering to get high-quality API security questions:
Start simple—use a direct prompt like:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for API Developers survey about API Security.
But you’ll get even better results with more context. For example:
My team develops and maintains several public APIs. Security is a top concern, as we’ve faced a few incidents in the last year. We want to understand what security practices and pain points other API developers have. Please suggest 10 insightful open-ended survey questions for an audience of experienced API developers focused on API security.
Next, prompt ChatGPT to structure the content:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
When reviewing those categories, pick the ones that matter most (say, “detection/monitoring” or “AI-related vulnerabilities”), then dig deeper:
Generate 10 questions for the categories “detection/monitoring” and “AI-related vulnerabilities”.
This workflow helps you create nuanced, targeted questions—much like Specific’s built-in AI survey generator does automatically.
What is a conversational survey?
A conversational survey isn’t just another form—it’s a dynamic, back-and-forth interview, powered by AI and built for deep listening. Unlike traditional surveys, which feel like cold checklists of boxes, conversational surveys adapt, clarify, and intelligently probe like a skilled researcher would. AI survey generation is fundamentally different from manual script-building: it offloads mental overhead, reduces bias, and gives you questions crafted from expert knowledge in seconds.
Manual Surveys | AI-generated Conversational Surveys |
|---|---|
Require specialist knowledge to write | AI-generated with expert input instantly |
Static; no awareness of answers | Follows up and clarifies in real-time |
Hard to analyze qualitative data | AI summarizes, categorizes, and chats about data |
Low respondent engagement | Feels like a helpful conversation |
Why use AI for API developer surveys? API security risks evolve constantly (we saw a 1,025% increase in AI-related API vulnerabilities last year [5]), meaning static survey templates quickly go stale. An AI survey example lets you adapt, clarify, and dig into whatever issue dominates your corner of the API security landscape. The feedback is sharper, richer, and less biased—and with Specific, the entire process feels smooth and low effort for both the survey creator and respondents.
For a walk-through on building your own conversational survey, check out our step-by-step guide to creating API developer surveys about API security.
See this API security survey example now
Want a smarter way to discover and fix API security blind spots? Specific’s conversational AI surveys deliver deeper developer insights, faster—so you can act decisively and stay secure.