Here are some of the best questions for a clinical trial participants survey about adverse events reporting, along with actionable tips for crafting them. If you want to build an effective conversational survey in seconds, you can generate a custom survey using Specific’s AI survey builder for this exact purpose.
The best open-ended questions for clinical trial participants about adverse events reporting
Open-ended questions uncover rich, detailed feedback you’d miss with rigid formats. They’re perfect when you want stories, context, or signal about experiences you didn’t even think to ask about. Participants will elaborate on their experience, not just tick boxes—which really matters in clinical trials where underreporting or vague answers can affect safety data. Research shows that a significant percentage of clinical trials underreport adverse events, making comprehensive, qualitative feedback vital for data integrity and participant safety. [2]
Can you describe any side effects or reactions you’ve experienced since starting the trial medication?
What was your first thought or feeling when you noticed any unusual symptoms during the trial?
How did you decide whether to report an adverse event to the clinical staff?
Were there any obstacles or concerns that stopped you from reporting a side effect?
How was your experience when sharing side effects with the trial team—what worked or didn’t work?
If you could change one thing about the process of reporting adverse events, what would it be?
How comfortable did you feel discussing side effects you experienced?
Describe a time when you weren’t sure whether a symptom was important enough to mention to the staff.
What additional support or information would help you report adverse events more effectively?
Is there anything else about your experience reporting side effects in this trial you’d like to share?
The best single-select multiple-choice questions for clinical trial participants surveys
Single-select multiple-choice questions make it easy to quantify results, spot trends, or understand how common a sentiment is. They’re a great way to start a conversation—sometimes it’s less intimidating for a participant to pick a short answer, warming them up for a follow-up. They shine when you need numbers, quick opinions, or want to identify cases for deeper probing with smart follow-up questions.
Question: How often did you experience any side effects during the clinical trial?
Never
Occasionally
Frequently
Constantly
Question: How easy was it to report an adverse event to the clinical trial team?
Very easy
Somewhat easy
Somewhat difficult
Very difficult
Other
Question: Did you ever hesitate to report a symptom because you were unsure it was related to the trial?
Yes
No
I’m not sure
When to follow up with "why?" Whenever someone picks an answer that might be ambiguous, surprising, or critical to your research—ask “why?” as an immediate follow-up. For example, if a participant selects “Very difficult” for reporting, the AI can ask, “What made it difficult for you to report side effects?” You’ll get richer insights and practical suggestions this way.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? Adding “Other” allows participants to flag missing experiences or edge cases you didn’t anticipate. When someone chooses “Other”, a follow-up question like, “Could you describe what made your experience different?” can uncover unexpected insights and gaps that structured options might miss.
Should you use NPS-type questions for adverse event reporting?
NPS (Net Promoter Score) asks, “How likely are you to recommend X to a friend?” It’s a powerful pulse check for sentiment, but here, you’ll want to rephrase for context—something like, “How likely are you to recommend participation in this clinical trial to someone else, based on your experience with adverse event reporting?” Using an NPS-style question helps benchmark participant satisfaction over time. Studies have linked participant trust in reporting processes with better data quality and trial retention figures. See how to set up a tailored NPS survey for this use case.
The power of follow-up questions
Follow-ups are where the magic happens. Instead of stopping at a one-word answer, smart follow-up questions dig into “why”, clarify uncertainty, or prompt for examples. Specific’s AI follow-up questions feature means the survey acts more like a live, expert interviewer—probing just enough to capture full context and nuance in real time. This closes the gap where traditional surveys fall short and helps uncover themes missed by generic survey tools.
Clinical trial participant: “It was hard to report my skin rash.”
AI follow-up: “What were the main difficulties you experienced when trying to report your skin rash?”
How many followups to ask? 2–3 targeted follow-ups are usually ideal, but you should allow the participant to skip ahead once you’ve covered the essentials. Specific lets you customize this—so you can balance depth with respondent comfort.
This makes it a conversational survey, inviting participants into an actual dialogue instead of interrogating them. The result? You get context-rich answers—and participants feel heard, not just counted.
AI-powered survey analysis is a game changer—open-ended answers and followup responses are easy to analyze with AI, even when there’s a lot of unstructured feedback. (Read how AI survey response analysis works here.)
These new automated follow-ups are worth experiencing for yourself—try generating a clinical trial survey and see the conversational approach in action.
How to prompt ChatGPT or GPTs for better adverse events reporting questions
Want to design your own list of effective questions? Start simple, and build context for better AI results:
Start with this prompt for basics:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for clinical trial participants survey about adverse events reporting.
But you’ll get better output if you enrich the prompt. For example:
We’re designing a survey for people who’ve taken part in a clinical drug trial. The goal is to improve how we collect reports of side effects or adverse events. Suggest 10 open-ended questions to understand participant experiences, barriers, and expectations.
To refine further, ask:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Then, go deeper on the most relevant theme:
Generate 10 questions for the category “Barriers to Adverse Event Reporting”.
Add context about your specific trial phase, medication, or expected side effects for even more tailored questions. Let the AI’s expert capabilities do the grunt work for you, freeing up your energy for analyzing results instead of wrestling with question wording.
What is a conversational survey—and why is it different?
A conversational survey feels like a human interview, not a form. Participants answer one question at a time in a chat-like flow, and the AI follows up instantly as needed—never bombarding them with a long, intimidating form.
Here’s a quick comparison:
Manual Surveys | AI-Generated Conversational Surveys |
|---|---|
Create each question individually (slow and laborious) | Build a survey instantly from a prompt using the AI survey generator |
Rigid structure, hard to personalize or adapt on the fly | Dynamic follow-ups and probing, adapts to each participant’s answers |
Analysis is manual—sorting, coding, summarizing open text is a grind | Responses summarized and analyzed with AI; chat with your survey data as if you had a research analyst on hand |
High dropout risk for long/complex surveys | Engaging, chat-like experience leads to higher participation and completion rates [4] |
Why use AI for clinical trial participant surveys? AI-powered survey creation brings both speed and expert-level quality. It means less time spent building and launching surveys and more time on what really matters—interpreting results and improving clinical processes. Plus, AI can help you spot signals in feedback that might go unnoticed with manual review, especially as volume grows. Studies have shown that AI-driven surveys can improve the accuracy and completeness of adverse event reporting in clinical trials by enabling smarter, timely follow-ups and reducing manual effort. [3]
Specific offers a best-in-class conversational survey experience that is both smooth for creators and engaging for participants. Want to see exactly how to set it up from scratch? Read our step-by-step guide to creating a survey for clinical trial participants.
See this adverse events reporting survey example now
Create a truly effective conversational survey, gather better insights, and see why AI-driven surveys are the new standard for capturing essential participant feedback in clinical trials.