Here are some of the best questions for a citizen survey about emergency preparedness, plus practical tips on how to create them. You can build a high-quality citizen emergency preparedness survey with Specific in seconds—no manual hassle.
Best open-ended questions for citizen surveys about emergency preparedness
Open-ended questions let citizens share personal stories, unique needs, and give feedback that’s impossible to capture with simple checkboxes. They’re best when you want citizens’ experiences in their own words, and to uncover gaps or new ideas.
What do you think would help your household better prepare for emergencies?
Can you describe any barriers you’ve faced in trying to get ready for a disaster?
Tell us about a time you had to respond to an emergency. What did you learn?
How do you receive information about local emergencies or disasters?
If you were to give emergency preparedness advice to neighbors, what would it be?
Are there specific resources or support you'd like from your community to prepare?
What concerns you most about your ability to respond to an emergency?
What motivates you (or not) to take preparedness actions?
How could local authorities improve communication before, during, and after emergencies?
What changes would make you feel more confident about your preparedness?
Choosing open-ended questions matters. Recent reports show only 51% of Americans feel prepared for disaster, and similar gaps exist globally [1]. Citizens’ stories will reveal context behind these numbers—something you’ll never get from closed questions alone.
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for emergency preparedness
Single-select multiple-choice questions shine when you need quick, quantifiable answers or want to guide the survey conversation. Sometimes it’s easier for people to pick a succinct option. These questions help you spot broad trends, measure preparedness, or segment respondents for follow-ups.
Question: Have you created an emergency plan for your household?
Yes, and we review it regularly
Yes, but we haven't reviewed it recently
No, but we’re planning to
No, and we have no plans to
Question: How confident do you feel about responding to a major local emergency (e.g. natural disaster, blackout, flood)?
Very confident
Somewhat confident
Not very confident
Not at all confident
Question: What is your preferred way to receive emergency updates?
Text message alerts
Social media
Phone call
Other
When to followup with "why?" If someone says "not very confident" or selects a negative or positive extreme, always follow up with “Why?” or “Can you elaborate?” This uncovers the reasons—a core part of effective, conversational surveys.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? Use “Other” when your fixed options might miss new channels or preferences, and always let respondents explain in their own words. Follow-up questions surface unexpected needs—maybe someone prefers emergency radio, or has accessible needs you didn’t anticipate.
Should you use NPS for emergency preparedness citizen surveys?
NPS (Net Promoter Score) asks citizens how likely they’d recommend taking preparedness actions to friends or family, on a scale from 0 to 10. It’s a simple, proven way to measure sentiment at a glance—great for tracking shifts in public trust or engagement over time. Especially when only 13% in the UK, 51% in the US, and just two-thirds of the EU feel prepared or well-informed, a metric like NPS lends instant clarity to community pulse [1][2][3]. You can generate a ready-to-use NPS citizen survey about emergency preparedness directly with Specific’s NPS template.
The power of follow-up questions
Follow-up questions transform surveys from static forms into real conversations. It’s the key feature that helps Specific stand out—see more details on automated followups. When the AI probes deeper, it captures crucial context, clarifies vague answers, and discovers details you didn’t think to ask initially.
Citizen: “I don’t feel confident about emergencies.”
AI follow-up: “What makes you feel unprepared? Is it a lack of resources, information, or something else?”
How many followups to ask? In practice, 2–3 smart follow-ups are usually enough. You don’t want to badger respondents, but you also don’t want surface-level replies. Specific lets you set follow-up depth and allows people to skip if they’re done sharing.
This makes it a conversational survey: Follow-ups unlock deeper understanding and make the experience more like a real chat than a dry form.
Analyze responses with AI, fast: Even with lots of text, analyzing responses from citizen emergency surveys is instant and easy with AI-powered summaries. No more drowning in unstructured feedback.
Conversational follow-ups are a fairly new concept. We recommend trying to generate your own AI survey—it feels like talking to a skilled researcher, in real time.
How to write prompts for GPTs to generate citizen emergency preparedness questions
Getting quality questions out of ChatGPT or other AI models is mostly about the prompt. Try starting with something simple, then add more context for improved results.
Start with:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for Citizen survey about Emergency Preparedness.
But for better quality, describe your role, goal, and target audience in more depth:
I’m a local authority designing a Citizen survey about emergency preparedness. The audience is adults living in a flood-prone area. My goal is to identify gaps in preparedness and communication. Suggest 10 open-ended questions that help me discover barriers, needs, and opportunities.
For organization and focus:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
After reviewing categories, go deeper:
Generate 10 questions for the “Communication Challenges” and “Resource Needs” categories.
Be specific each time—the more context for the AI, the more targeted and actionable your list of questions will be.
What is a conversational survey?
Conversational surveys simulate a natural chat—every answer can be followed up in real time, with tone and questions that flex to the respondent’s needs. Traditional surveys feel like paperwork; conversational surveys feel like an interview with a caring expert. With Specific, we build each survey to flow naturally, and make it simple for both creators and citizens.
Manual Survey Creation | AI-Generated Conversational Survey |
|---|---|
Manual question construction | Instant generation with AI |
Static, limited follow-ups | Dynamic, real-time probing by AI |
Hard to iterate or localize | Editable in plain English, multilingual-ready |
Slow and tedious analysis | Automated AI insights, summaries, and chat-based exploration |
Why use AI for citizen surveys? Simply put, AI survey generators save you hours, dramatically raise response quality, and adapt instantly if you need to update questions or logic. And with response analysis powered by AI, you won’t lose time making sense of feedback—see this AI survey analysis guide for practical steps.
Want to know more about chat-based interviews or the creation process? Check out our step-by-step guide to designing effective citizen surveys about emergency preparedness in minutes with Specific. Our platform offers the best-in-class user experience, combining the smarts of GPT-powered AI and research-backed logic for rich, actionable feedback.
See this emergency preparedness survey example now
Get immediate, contextual insights and discover what citizens truly need—our conversational AI surveys reveal more than old-school forms ever could. See the difference by trying an emergency preparedness survey; you’ll find it’s never been this fast or effective to gather deep, actionable feedback.