Here are some of the best questions for a citizen survey about parks and recreation, along with practical tips on building a strong survey. Specific can help you quickly generate your own conversational survey in seconds.
Best open-ended questions to ask in a citizen survey about parks and recreation
Open-ended questions let people speak freely, share their opinions, and uncover ideas you might not expect. We use them to capture richer, more authentic feedback—especially when exploring community needs, satisfaction, or suggestions for improvement. A well-placed open question can turn surface-level answers into insights you wouldn’t have found otherwise.
Here are the 10 best open-ended questions:
What do you value most about your local parks and recreation facilities?
Can you describe a memorable experience you’ve had in a park or recreational area recently?
What improvements would make your visits to parks more enjoyable?
How does access to parks and recreation affect your quality of life?
Are there any barriers that make it difficult for you or your family to use local parks?
What types of activities or amenities do you wish were available but aren’t currently offered?
How safe do you feel when using local parks, and why?
When you think about the future of parks in your community, what do you hope to see?
Do you have suggestions on how parks can be more inclusive to everyone?
Is there anything else you’d like us to know about your experience or opinions related to parks and recreation?
Since over 276 million people visited a park or recreation facility in the U.S. last year, high-quality, thoughtful questions can surface gaps and opportunities that matter most to your community. [1]
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for a citizen survey about parks and recreation
Single-select multiple-choice questions make it easy to get quantifiable data and create a comfortable starting point for dialogue. They’re especially helpful when you want to measure frequency, satisfaction, or preferences. Sometimes, people find it easier to pick from a short list of options—and you can always use follow-ups to dig deeper.
Question: How often do you visit your local parks or recreation facilities?
Daily
Weekly
Monthly
Rarely
Never
Question: What is your main reason for visiting parks and recreation areas?
Exercise or fitness
Family time
Socializing
Relaxation
Other
Question: How would you rate the overall quality of your local parks?
Excellent
Good
Average
Poor
When to follow up with "why?" You should ask "why?" when a response needs more explanation—for example, if someone rates parks as "poor," following up with "Why did you rate the parks as poor?" brings out more actionable insight.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? Adding "Other" lets people share needs or opinions you might not have anticipated. Smart follow-up questions after someone selects "Other" often uncover fresh insights you didn’t know to ask.
Should you use an NPS question in a citizen survey about parks and recreation?
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) asks citizens how likely they are to recommend local parks and recreation areas to others, using a 0–10 scale. It’s an effective way to gauge overall satisfaction and loyalty, offering a clear benchmark over time. NPS works especially well for public services—allowing communities to track sentiment shifts after making changes or launching new initiatives.
If you want to include an NPS question with tailored follow-ups (like "What would make you more likely to recommend our parks?"), you can quickly build an NPS survey for parks and recreation in just a few clicks.
The power of follow-up questions
Automated follow-up questions are game-changers for maximizing the value of each response. Specific’s AI can instantly ask smart, relevant follow-ups based on how a person answers—like an expert who knows just what to ask next. This makes your survey feel more like a real conversation and less like a static form. It also means you won’t have to chase people via email to clarify confusing answers.
For more on how this works, check out our automated follow-up questions feature. AI-powered followups provide richer detail and clearer insights by adapting in real time.
Citizen: "The parks are okay but could be better."
AI follow-up: "Thanks for sharing! Can you tell me what specific improvements would make your experience better?"
How many followups to ask? Generally, 2–3 follow-ups are enough. You can tell the AI to stop when you’ve gotten the detail you need—Specific lets you configure this with a simple setting.
This makes it a conversational survey: Automated, in-the-moment follow-ups transform the process, making it feel like a natural back-and-forth. This conversational survey experience keeps people engaged and helps you gather more useful information.
AI survey analysis and response insights: Analyzing all this unstructured text used to be a huge pain. Now, with AI (read more on our response analysis guide), it’s fast, accurate, and effortless—even at scale. You’ll see key patterns and emotional nuances in feedback you might otherwise miss. [3]
Try generating a conversational survey and see just how much better your data can be.
How to prompt ChatGPT (or other GPTs) for great parks and recreation survey questions
AI tools can create strong questions if you give them clear, specific instructions. Here’s a prompt to start with:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for Citizen survey about Parks And Recreation.
For better results, add detail about your community, goals, or background. The more context, the better the questions:
I’m a city official planning a survey to improve our parks and recreation system. Please suggest 10 open-ended questions that explore current satisfaction, seek suggestions, and uncover barriers for all age groups.
Once you have your list, refine it further:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Then, you can explore priority areas deeper:
Generate 10 questions for categories like "Safety" and "Accessibility."
In practice, the combination of AI plus your expertise yields powerful surveys that are both sharp and community-focused.
What is a conversational survey?
A conversational survey uses AI or smart logic to create a back-and-forth "chat-like" experience. Instead of presenting a list of static questions, this format listens, adapts, and probes for clarification in real time. That’s exactly how Specific works—resulting in higher engagement and richer answers.
How does AI survey generation compare to traditional, manual survey creation? Here’s what we’ve seen:
Manual Surveys | AI-Generated (Conversational) Surveys |
|---|---|
Pre-set questions, little to no follow-up | Dynamically adapts to answers with real-time follow-ups |
Hard to personalize or pivot mid-survey | Feels like natural conversation, easier to probe specific topics |
Analysis of text answers labor-intensive | AI offers instant summaries and themes for quick insights |
Lower completion rates | Up to 40% higher completion rates and better data consistency [2] |
Why use AI for citizen surveys? With AI, you capture real emotion and context as people share their stories. You also build surveys faster and cut down on manual work. AI survey tools are rapidly growing in use—expected to increase 22% annually [4]—and consistently outperform traditional methods in response quality and participation rates [2][4].
If you want to learn more about how to create a survey, see our step-by-step guide on building citizen surveys about parks and recreation.
Specific leads the way in user-friendly, conversational survey experiences, making feedback collection engaging and insightful for everyone involved.
See this parks and recreation survey example now
Get inspired by a real AI-powered survey that makes it simple for citizens to share what matters most. Experience the difference and start building more insightful surveys right away.