Best questions for civil servant survey about corruption perception

Here are some of the best questions for a civil servant survey about corruption perception, plus practical tips to craft your own. You can build a tailored survey using Specific in just seconds.

Best open-ended questions for civil servant survey about corruption perception

Open-ended questions are essential when you want to understand real-life experiences and dig below the surface. They let civil servants express perspectives and context in their own words—giving you richer, more actionable insights to shape anti-corruption efforts. These questions are best at the beginning of the survey or as follow-ups to quantitative questions:

1. How do you define corruption within the public sector?

2. Can you share an instance where you observed or heard of corrupt practices within your workplace?

3. What factors do you believe contribute most to corruption among civil servants?

4. How does corruption impact the daily work environment for you and your colleagues?

5. What do you perceive as the most common forms of corruption in your department or agency?

6. In your experience, what challenges arise when attempting to report or address corruption?

7. How effective do you think current anti-corruption measures are within your organization?

8. What changes do you think would have the most impact on reducing corruption among civil servants?

9. How do you feel leadership handles allegations or signs of corruption?

10. What additional support or resources would help you resist or report corrupt practices?

For context, only 36% of surveyed people believe civil servants would reject a bribe intended to expedite access to a service. Hearing civil servants’ experiences directly is crucial to closing this integrity gap. [1]

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for civil servant survey about corruption perception

Single-select multiple-choice questions are great when you want to quantify perceptions or offer a starting point for discussion. They help respondents who might feel overwhelmed by open questions, offering quick options while still steering the conversation to areas you want to explore. They're also ideal for benchmarking over time or comparing between departments.

Question: How often do you think corruption occurs in your department?

• Very frequently

• Sometimes

• Rarely

• Never

Question: In your view, what is the main driver of corruption among civil servants?

• Personal financial gain

• Lack of oversight

• Cultural norms

• Other

Question: How confident are you in your organization’s anti-corruption policies?

• Very confident

• Somewhat confident

• Not confident

When to follow up with "why?" Always ask “why” after a respondent selects an option that requires more context or could be interpreted in multiple ways. For instance, if someone says they’re not confident in the anti-corruption policies, the follow-up could be: “Can you share what experiences or gaps led to your lack of confidence in these policies?” This uncovers richer details.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Use “Other” when it’s likely your list of options isn’t comprehensive, or you want to encourage unique perspectives. Automated follow-ups after “Other” can reveal issues or drivers you hadn’t considered—which is often how real breakthroughs happen.

NPS question for civil servant survey about corruption perception

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is usually used to measure loyalty, but it’s just as effective for gauging trust in anti-corruption efforts among civil servants. The NPS question here could be:

“On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend your organization as a model for integrity and anti-corruption?”

Follow up based on their score for actionable insight. This approach offers a quick benchmark to create an NPS survey for civil servants about corruption perception. NPS provides a single, quantitative measure that you can track over time and combine with open-ended responses for deeper analysis.

The power of follow-up questions

Great feedback rarely comes from a single question. Follow-up questions are what make a survey conversational—diving deeper in real time, clarifying meaning, and uncovering stories. Specific’s AI-powered follow-up questions transform surveys into dialogues, automatically adapting to respondents’ answers like a research expert, saving your team hours and ensuring nothing gets lost in translation. This works especially well for complex topics like corruption perception, where context matters.

• Civil servant: “Sometimes I see things that seem off, but I’m not sure if it’s corruption.”

• AI follow-up: “Can you describe what you observed and why it made you feel uneasy, even if you’re unsure about labeling it corruption?”

How many follow-ups to ask? Usually, 2–3 targeted follow-ups are enough to get full context—Specific lets you set this limit in your survey logic, so respondents aren’t overwhelmed and you still gather what you need. There’s even an option to skip to the next question once the required information comes in.

This makes it a conversational survey: Conversations are natural, so people share more, especially about nuanced topics like corruption perception.

AI analysis for unstructured responses: Even though you’ll collect lots of open-ended text, AI can easily analyze and summarize everything. See how to analyze survey responses using AI for powerful, actionable insights.

Automated follow-up questions are new, but they make a huge difference. Try generating a survey to experience how much richer the responses become in a real conversation.

How to prompt GPT for civil servant corruption perception survey questions

Generating great survey questions with GPT or any AI works best if you give enough context. To get started, use:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for Civil Servant survey about Corruption Perception.

But this gets richer if you add your goals and background:

Our organization wants to understand how civil servants perceive corruption and identify obstacles to transparency. Suggest 10 open-ended questions that explore daily experiences, reporting challenges, leadership, and the effectiveness of anti-corruption efforts.

Next, sort your questions into themes or categories to structure your survey:

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

Finally, focus in on the themes or categories that matter most to your research:

Generate 10 questions for the categories “Reporting Barriers” and “Leadership Response”.

This layered approach helps you get clear, comprehensive questions tailored to your goal.

What is a conversational survey?

Conversational surveys are fundamentally different from traditional survey forms. Instead of a static list of questions, respondents interact with an AI in a chat-style format. The conversation adapts in real time—meaning every answer can trigger context-aware follow-ups, encourage clarification, and keep respondents engaged until the end.

Let’s compare:

Why use AI for civil servant surveys? AI survey generators are purpose-built for nuanced, sensitive topics where context matters. They adapt questions to the respondent’s input, maintain engagement, and analyze qualitative data fast. Completion rates soar to 70–80% for AI surveys, compared to 45–50% for traditional ones—and abandonment is nearly halved. [3] With AI, you can request an AI survey example on corruption perception in minutes and be confident you’re not missing the story behind the data.

Specific provides the best-in-class user experience for AI survey creation and conversational survey logic, making it easy and even enjoyable for civil servants to share honest feedback. Want to see the step-by-step? Check our guide on how to create a civil servant survey about corruption perception.

See this corruption perception survey example now

Get actionable feedback from civil servants on corruption perception with an engaging, AI-powered conversational survey. See how Specific helps you uncover insights that form the foundation of real change.