Here are some of the best questions for a citizen survey about public art and culture, plus tips on how to make your own. If you want to generate a high-quality survey with smart follow-ups, Specific helps you build one in seconds—try the AI survey generator made for this exact topic.
10 best open-ended questions for a citizen survey about public art and culture
Open-ended questions are the gold standard when you want depth and nuance. They invite citizens to express thoughts in their own words, reveal emotions, and share perspectives you might never have anticipated. Open questions uncover what truly matters, but they work best when you want stories and ideas, not just numbers. They’re especially valuable when you want insights for shaping policy, understanding experiences, or collecting visionary suggestions about public art and cultural life.
What public art installations or cultural activities in your community do you value most, and why?
How do you feel public art contributes to the identity of your city or neighborhood?
Can you describe a memorable experience you’ve had with public art or cultural events locally?
What changes or additions would you like to see in public art or cultural programs where you live?
How accessible and inclusive do you find cultural spaces and events in your area?
In what ways do you think public art and culture could bring people together in your community?
What barriers, if any, prevent you from engaging with public art or cultural activities?
How does exposure to public art or cultural events influence your sense of belonging?
What type of public art (murals, sculptures, performances, etc.) do you wish were more common?
Is there a story or local artist you think deserves more recognition in your community's culture?
Open-ended questions can feel like an invitation. And with the right AI-powered tools, they’re no longer a headache to analyze—AI can process and find themes even in thousands of free-form replies, making these questions truly actionable for city decision-makers. In fact, AI can analyze thousands of written responses in minutes, identify emotions, and reduce misinterpretation, which opens the door for deeper insights [1].
Best single-select multiple-choice questions
Single-select multiple-choice questions are your go-to when you need to quantify opinion, identify key priorities, or start the feedback conversation. They make responding quick and comfortable, especially for busy citizens or when the question could be overwhelming if it was open-ended. Use these to map preferences, measure satisfaction, or segment your audience—then dig deeper with open or follow-up questions.
Question: How satisfied are you with the amount of public art in your neighborhood?
Very satisfied
Somewhat satisfied
Neutral
Somewhat dissatisfied
Very dissatisfied
Question: Which type of cultural event do you most often participate in locally?
Music concerts
Art exhibitions
Theater performances
Food festivals
Other
Question: How important is it for your city to fund public art and cultural programs?
Extremely important
Somewhat important
Not important
When to follow up with "why?" If someone selects “Very dissatisfied” (or even “Very satisfied”), it’s essential to ask “why?” Next, let the citizen tell their story—as this is where true context and actionable feedback are revealed. For example, if a respondent chooses “Somewhat dissatisfied”, an immediate follow-up could be: “What specifically makes you feel dissatisfied with the amount of public art in your neighborhood?” This opens up richer insight for city planners and culture teams.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? Use “Other” when you suspect current options might not capture everyone’s experience. If a citizen picks “Other”, prompt with a follow-up to specify their answer. This often leads to unexpected new ideas or highlights overlooked community needs.
Should you include an NPS question for citizen feedback?
NPS, or Net Promoter Score, is a popular, fast way to gauge general sentiment towards an initiative—in this case, your city’s public art and culture programs. It asks: “On a scale from 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our public art and culture programs to others?” NPS works well for benchmarking and tracking change over time. Citizens who score low can be asked what would improve their experience, while promoters reveal what’s working.
If you want to add a classic NPS question with optional tailored follow-ups (for promoters, passives, and detractors), you can generate an NPS-style citizen survey in seconds using Specific.
The power of follow-up questions
Follow-up questions are where the magic happens. If you stop at a single answer, you risk missing context or misunderstanding intent. The reason conversational, AI-powered surveys (like those made with Specific’s survey builder) outperform traditional forms is their ability to probe deeper. Specific’s AI will ask follow-ups in real time, just like an interviewer would, making every response clearer and more actionable. This is a massive leap from static survey forms—automated AI follow-up questions can be a complete game changer for citizen insight learn more about automated follow-ups.
Citizen: “The events aren’t inclusive.”
AI follow-up: “In what ways do you feel the events could be more inclusive?”
Citizen: “Public art here is boring.”
AI follow-up: “Can you share what types of public art you’d find exciting or engaging?”
How many follow-ups to ask? Two to three follow-up questions are usually enough to get a clear picture—beyond that, you risk fatiguing the respondent. Specific lets you fine-tune this in settings, so you can stop follow-ups once you have what you need. You can even let the AI decide if the answer is already detailed enough.
This makes it a conversational survey. Instead of being interrogated by a cold form, citizens feel heard—every answer is met with genuine interest, just like chatting with a real person.
AI survey response analysis: When you use follow-up questions, you collect a wealth of unstructured data—but there’s no need to worry. With AI-powered analysis (see how AI survey analysis works), it’s fast and easy to identify themes and insights from even the biggest text datasets. AI can cut through the complexity so you can act quickly.
Automated follow-ups are fairly new—give it a try and experience the clarity and insight for yourself on your next survey.
How to write effective prompts for AI-generated public art and culture survey questions
Prompting is everything with AI. If you want to get the best survey questions, start with a clear goal. Here’s an easy first step:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for citizen survey about public art and culture.
You’ll get better results if you offer context about your city, audience, and what you want to learn. Try:
We want to understand how young adults in our city engage with public art. Our goal is to improve participation and discover unmet needs. Suggest 10 open-ended questions for a citizen survey on public art and culture, focusing on accessibility, engagement, and diversity.
Once you have a list, you can prompt the AI to sort and categorize the questions. This is especially useful for multi-section surveys:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
After seeing the categories—for example, “Engagement,” “Barriers,” “Suggestions”—pick your priorities and dive deeper:
Generate 10 questions for categories Engagement and Barriers.
If you’d rather not build it from scratch, try Specific’s one-click survey generator designed for citizen feedback on public art and culture, or customize anything with the general survey maker.
What is a conversational survey and how does AI survey generation compare?
A conversational survey is not just a static form—it’s an interactive Q&A, powered by AI, that adapts in real time. Instead of “fill in the blank” boxes, respondents chat with an intelligent agent, which asks relevant follow-ups, checks clarity, and updates its tone to keep engagement high.
Traditional survey creation is manual: you brainstorm questions, build logic flows, and hope people don’t drop out halfway through. By contrast, AI-generated surveys handle all the heavy lifting. With AI, you get relevant questions, dynamic follow-up prompts, and targeted survey flows right from the start—no spreadsheet acrobatics required. As a result, AI-powered surveys have reported completion rates of 70-90%, compared to as low as 10-30% for traditional surveys [1]. This spike in quality happens because AI adapts to each respondent’s behavior, keeps the exchange friendly, and reduces fatigue. Data quality improves as well—up to 40% higher completion and 25% fewer inconsistencies [1][2].
Manual surveys | AI-generated (Specific) |
|---|---|
Build questions and logic by hand | Instantly generate questions and logic with a prompt |
No adaptive follow-ups | Dynamic, automatic follow-ups for richer responses |
Slow data analysis | Instant AI-powered analysis and summaries |
High drop-off / survey fatigue | High completion and engagement rates |
Why use AI for citizen surveys? AI makes surveys easier to answer, shorter to analyze, and more powerful for decision-making. Open-ended feedback, which is gold for public art and culture, becomes just as easy to handle as multiple-choice responses. And with platforms like Specific—which offers best-in-class conversational surveys—your surveys are engaging, mobile-friendly, and designed to capture the hidden “why” behind every answer.
Want step-by-step instructions on how to create a survey for citizen feedback on public art and culture? We have a guide to get you started.
See this public art and culture survey example now
Start engaging your community and collecting real insights with a few clicks—see firsthand how a conversational AI-powered survey can transform the way you understand citizen needs and ideas.