Best questions for citizen survey about street cleanliness

Here are some of the best questions for a citizen survey about street cleanliness, plus smart tips on crafting them. If you want to quickly build your own survey, you can generate an engaging, AI-powered survey with Specific in seconds.

Best open-ended questions for citizen survey about street cleanliness

Open-ended questions let people explain their experiences and concerns with street cleanliness in their own words—they uncover what really matters, not just easy-to-measure facts. These are especially useful when you want richer context or to spot issues you might miss with checkboxes.

Below are our top 10 open-ended questions for a citizen street cleanliness survey. These can help you capture everything from personal observations to bigger community concerns:

1. What is your overall impression of the cleanliness of streets in your area?

2. What specific problems related to street cleanliness have you noticed recently?

3. In your view, what causes most of the litter or dirt in public spaces?

4. How does street cleanliness affect your daily life or sense of community?

5. Can you describe a time when street cleanliness positively or negatively impacted your neighborhood?

6. Which locations or areas do you think require more attention regarding cleaning?

7. What improvements would you suggest to enhance street cleanliness in your neighborhood?

8. Have you participated in any community initiatives or campaigns about street cleaning? If so, how did it influence your perception?

9. What role do you believe residents, local businesses, or the city government should play in maintaining street cleanliness?

10. If you could change one thing about street cleaning services, what would it be and why?

Using open-ended questions like these not only surfaces hidden issues, but also reveals community-driven solutions and priorities—value you can’t get from limiting people to fixed answers. For example, research shows that clean streets can foster pride and reduce stress, while neglected environments often lead to anxiety and division among residents. [1]

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for citizen survey about street cleanliness

Single-select multiple-choice questions are ideal when you want to quantify opinions or quickly sort responses for trends—especially if you’re getting a large number of responses. They can also reduce survey fatigue, as some people find it easier and faster to pick an option than write an answer. Starting a conversation with a quick choice can also pave the way for deeper follow-up questions.

Question: How satisfied are you with the current level of street cleanliness in your neighborhood?

• Very satisfied

• Somewhat satisfied

• Neutral

• Somewhat dissatisfied

• Very dissatisfied

Question: What do you believe contributes most to street litter in your area?

• Insufficient trash bins

• Lack of street cleaning

• Public behavior/littering

• Events or festivals

• Other

Question: Which public spaces do you think are most in need of improved cleaning?

• Residential streets

• Main roads

• Parks/playgrounds

• Commercial areas

When to follow-up with "why?" If someone picks “Very dissatisfied,” for example, you should ask “Why?” to discover what’s truly behind their dissatisfaction—is it a recurring dumping site, lack of bins, or infrequent cleaning? This gives you context you wouldn’t get from the rating alone, and lets you understand the story behind the number.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Adding “Other” as an option is key when you want to allow answers you didn’t anticipate. Following up with, “Can you please describe what you meant by 'Other'?” helps you capture unexpected insights and avoid tunnel vision in your survey data.

NPS-style question for citizen survey on street cleanliness

Sometimes, it makes sense to include a Net Promoter Score (NPS) type question in a citizen street cleanliness survey. NPS typically asks “How likely are you to recommend [service/product] to a friend or colleague?” On the topic of street cleanliness, it can efficiently measure overall satisfaction and loyalty—how willing residents are to recommend their city’s cleanliness standards to others. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, for example, only 50% of surveyed citizens expressed satisfaction with street cleanliness, showing plenty of room for improvement and tracking over time. [3]

• An NPS question here could be: “How likely are you to recommend your neighborhood’s street cleanliness to a friend or out-of-town visitor?” (Answer scale: 0 - Not at all likely, 10 - Extremely likely.)

If you want to try it, our NPS survey generator for street cleanliness can help you get started instantly. Use NPS for a simple, high-level metric that’s easy to benchmark and track across communities.

The power of follow-up questions

If you want to discover nuanced issues or spot opportunity areas others miss, asking follow-up questions is a must. Automatic, AI-powered follow-up questions can clarify ambiguous responses or dig into the “why” behind someone’s answer—far more efficiently than chasing answers over email. With Specific, each reply triggers intelligent, relevant follow-ups in real time, like a skilled interviewer would do, so you always capture the full story. This makes every survey feel less like a checklist and more like a conversation.

Here’s a practical example of what happens if you skip follow-ups:

• Citizen: “There’s a trash problem in my neighborhood.”

• AI follow-up: “Can you share a specific example of when this affected you, or describe where the biggest issues are?”

Without the follow-up, all you know is there’s “a problem”—with the follow-up, you get actionable info about where and how.

How many followups to ask? Usually, 2–3 follow-up questions are effective for going deeper, but it's smart to enable a setting to skip to the next question once you’ve collected enough detail. Specific makes this easy with built-in settings for precise control.

This makes it a conversational survey: Respondents feel truly heard, and data is richer and more actionable for you.

AI response analysis: Even with all this unstructured text, AI-powered tools make it easy to analyze citizen survey responses, so you can turn open text into clear themes and decisions.

Follow-up questions are a fresh approach—try generating a survey and experience the difference for yourself.

How to compose an AI prompt for citizen street cleanliness questions

Sometimes, you just need ideas fast. Here’s how you can use a GPT-based tool to generate survey questions for citizen street cleanliness:

The most basic prompt is:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for Citizen survey about Street Cleanliness.

If you give the AI more context on your community, concerns, or the change you hope to drive, you’ll get even better results. Try expanding your prompt, like:

I’m a city official working to improve neighborhood satisfaction. Our biggest issues have been illegal dumping in commercial zones and overflowing bins in parks. Suggest 10 open-ended questions that help us understand citizen opinions and solutions for street cleanliness.

Once you have a list, ask AI to sort and expand:

Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.

After that, pick the categories most relevant to your goals, then prompt the AI:

Generate 10 questions for the category “Resident responsibility in street cleanliness.”

This iterative prompting gives you both breadth and depth, so you never run out of fresh, insightful questions for your survey.

What is a conversational survey?

A conversational survey is an interactive, chat-like experience where questions adapt to what the respondent says. Instead of forcing people through generic forms, it feels like messaging with a thoughtful interviewer—natural, responsive, and human-centric.

Traditional surveys ask static questions, which can miss the tales and context hidden behind simple answers. With an AI survey maker, you describe your goals or challenges in plain language, and the tool creates a rich, customized survey—no technical know-how needed. Plus, it automatically follows up for clarity, saving you hours of manual chasing and summary writing.

Why use AI for citizen surveys? AI survey examples, like those built with Specific, are more engaging and deliver deeper insights because they learn and adapt to each respondent’s answers in real time. Plus, you’ll never miss a hidden trend or sentiment—every interaction is contextual, and every response is easier to analyze with powerful GPT-based tools.

Specific delivers the best-in-class user experience for conversational surveys, making collecting and understanding community feedback smooth for both survey creators and citizens. If you want step-by-step guidance, check out how to create a street cleanliness survey the modern, AI-driven way.

See this street cleanliness survey example now

Create your citizen street cleanliness survey now—get instant, conversational feedback that’s quantitative, qualitative, and actually actionable. Unlock richer insights and save hours with Specific’s AI-powered survey generator.