Here are some of the best questions for a Clinical Trial Participants survey about visit burden—and tips for crafting them to get rich, honest feedback. If you want to build a Clinical Trial Participants survey about visit burden in seconds, you can generate one with Specific, tapping into AI-tailored prompts and smart follow-ups.
Best open-ended questions for clinical trial participants survey about visit burden
Open-ended questions dig beneath the surface, letting participants share real stories and context. They’re best when you want more than simple statistics—like understanding emotional burdens or discovering unexpected challenges participants might face during clinical trial visits. According to research, participants often drop out of studies due to visit-related stress and logistical hurdles. In fact, 38% of dropouts cited stressful visits as their main reason for leaving a clinical trial, highlighting the need to probe deeper with the right questions. [1]
Can you describe a recent experience getting to a clinical trial visit? What challenges did you face?
How do the travel requirements for trial visits impact your daily routine or commitments?
What aspects of clinic visits feel most stressful or inconvenient to you personally?
Are there any specific factors (like transportation, parking, time off work) that make it harder to attend visits?
Have you ever considered dropping out of a clinical trial because of the visit burden? If so, what pushed you closest to that decision?
What would make the visit process easier or less burdensome for you?
How does the length or frequency of visits affect your willingness to keep participating?
Do you feel supported by the trial staff when managing visit logistics? Why or why not?
Are there any suggestions you have for reducing the hassle of study visits for participants like you?
Tell us about any unexpected challenges related to visit scheduling or travel that others might overlook.
Open-ended questions like these help uncover the “why” behind the pain points and inspire actionable change—with rich, unfiltered details straight from participants.
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for clinical trial participants survey about visit burden
Single-select multiple-choice questions work best when you need to quantify the experience, compare trends, or make answering easy for participants who might not have time for paragraph-long feedback. They’re also great icebreakers, making it easier to start a conversation and prime participants for detailed follow-up questions. Sometimes, it's more approachable to pick an option than to process a blank text box. Quantitative questions help researchers spot patterns—like how much time people spend traveling or which part of the process trips them up most. We know, for example, that 33% of clinical trial patients report travel times of up to an hour, and 22% travel even longer than that—data that’s easy to collect with a simple list of answers. [1]
Question: How much time does it typically take you to travel to the clinical trial site?
Less than 30 minutes
30 minutes to 1 hour
More than 1 hour
Other
Question: Which part of the visit process do you find most burdensome?
Travel to the site
Time spent at the clinic
Scheduling or rescheduling visits
Paperwork and check-ins
Question: How often have you had to rearrange your schedule to accommodate a study visit?
Never
Rarely
Sometimes
Often
When to follow up with "why?" If someone selects “Time spent at the clinic” as their main obstacle, that’s a perfect opportunity to ask, “Why is this part difficult for you?” Follow-ups dig into root causes—like uncomfortable waiting areas or unpredictable delays.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? The "Other" option lets participants bring up unique burdens that your list didn’t cover—maybe something like “childcare” or “site accessibility.” Follow-up questions after “Other” can surface surprising insights you’d never get from fixed choices alone.
NPS for clinical trial participants survey about visit burden
NPS (Net Promoter Score) asks participants how likely they are to recommend their clinical trial experience to others—which is a powerful metric for gauging overall satisfaction with the visit process. It’s especially relevant for clinical trial visit burden, since negative experiences often drive both dropouts and poor word-of-mouth. By layering NPS with specific visit burden questions, you capture both the “what” and the “how bad.” Want to launch an NPS survey for this topic? Try Specific’s automated NPS builder to see how it works.
A sample NPS question:
On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend participating in this clinical trial (considering all the visit requirements) to a friend or peer?
This single question—followed by “What is the main reason for your score?”—connects participant sentiment directly to visit-related burdens.
The power of follow-up questions
If you want survey responses that make real sense, automated follow-up questions change the game. Instead of flat answers, you get layered stories and detailed context, like a live interview. We built an automated follow-up feature into Specific so your survey can respond in real time, just like a thoughtful researcher.
Participant: "The visits are too long."
AI follow-up: "Can you tell me what specifically makes the visits feel long? Is it waiting, the procedures themselves, or something else?”
Without the follow-up, you’re left guessing. But a single, well-timed probe unpacks the whole story.
How many follow-ups to ask? Usually, 2-3 well-placed follow-ups are enough to clarify and dive deep. More than that risks fatiguing participants, so it’s smart to allow people to skip ahead once their answer is clear—Specific lets you control this behavior for a seamless experience.
This makes it a conversational survey—participants feel like they’re talking to someone who really wants to understand them, not just ticking boxes. Conversational surveys spark more authentic feedback.
AI survey response analysis—Even with tons of open responses and nuanced feedback, analyzing results is straightforward. AI can read, summarize, and theme all the replies with a click—see our complete guide to AI analysis for clinical trial surveys.
These kinds of automated follow-ups are a completely new way of running surveys—try generating a survey and see how deeply you can understand your participants’ burdens.
How to prompt ChatGPT (or any GPT) to create questions for clinical trial participants survey about visit burden
If you want fresh ideas or a new angle, prompting ChatGPT (or any advanced GPT) is usually faster and more generative than brainstorming on your own. Start simple:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for Clinical Trial Participants survey about Visit Burden.
Want smarter results? Give more context—describe your project, audience, goals, or any common issues participants might have. Here’s a richer example:
I’m designing a survey for clinical trial participants to better understand what makes attending site visits challenging. Our participants vary in age and live in both rural and urban areas. The trial involves monthly site visits and includes time-consuming procedures. Suggest 10 open-ended questions to uncover what burdens them most and their ideas for improvement.
Next, let the AI help you organize:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Then, explore selected areas more deeply:
Generate 10 questions for categories like “Travel logistics” and “Clinic experience.”
This iterative approach produces comprehensive, tailored survey content your team can review and adapt before launching.
What is a conversational survey?
Traditional surveys ask static questions—respondents pick from lists or type short answers. But a conversational survey, powered by AI like Specific, goes beyond: it listens, asks tailored follow-ups, and adapts on the fly based on each answer. The result? Responses are richer, and the participant experience is more engaging and natural.
Manual Surveys | AI-generated Conversational Surveys |
|---|---|
Static list of questions, same for every respondent | Dynamically adapts with tailored follow-up questions |
Can feel cold or impersonal | Feels human, empathetic, and interactive |
Time-consuming to create and update | Easy to generate, iterate, and edit using prompt-based builder like Specific’s AI survey generator |
Challenging to analyze open-text feedback at scale | Automated, AI-driven analysis distills insights instantly |
Why use AI for clinical trial participants surveys? AI lets you quickly generate and personalize even complex respondent journeys, uncover subtleties in participant experience, and make the entire research-feedback loop faster and more actionable. AI survey examples—especially conversational ones—empower both teams running the survey and people responding to it.
Specific is recognized as a leader in conversational surveys, making both survey creation and feedback collection smooth for all parties. If you’re new, check the how-to guide for building your own visit burden survey step by step.
See this visit burden survey example now
Experience a survey that truly understands participant burdens: conversational, adaptive, and easy to launch—get actionable insights with clarity and depth that standard surveys miss.