Best questions for college doctoral student survey about funding and stipend adequacy

Here are some of the best questions for a college doctoral student survey about funding and stipend adequacy, plus practical tips for crafting them. You can quickly generate such a survey with Specific in seconds, making the whole process effortless and insightful.

Open-ended questions for college doctoral student surveys on funding and stipends

Open-ended questions are essential for capturing nuanced perspectives and real stories—things a simple tick box just won’t reveal. They’re the backbone of truly understanding funding and stipend adequacy, letting us move beyond a number and get to feelings, challenges, and ideas for change. These are especially valuable when running a survey for college doctoral students, who have complex funding experiences that vary by discipline, location, and need.

1. How would you describe your overall experience with the current stipend and funding support you receive?

2. What financial challenges have you faced during your doctoral studies?

3. Can you share an example of a time when your funding was insufficient to cover your basic living or academic expenses?

4. What changes to the current stipend structure would have the greatest positive impact on you?

5. How does your stipend compare to your peers within or outside your discipline?

6. Have you had to take on additional work or debt due to inadequate funding? Please elaborate.

7. What non-financial support (e.g., mentorship, networking, mental health resources) could help mitigate funding stress?

8. If you've experienced a recent increase or decrease in your stipend, how has it affected your academic and personal life?

9. What advice would you give administrators or policymakers regarding doctoral student funding?

10. Is there anything else you wish people understood about the financial realities of being a doctoral student?

Recent policy changes and research highlight just how crucial these questions are. For example, **the UK’s 8% minimum PhD stipend increase to £20,780 by 2025 is the largest real-term hike since 2003** [1], while in Ireland, the government recently raised annual stipends to €22,000 [2]. Yet, as studies in Canada confirm, many stipends still fall below the poverty line for science doctoral students [5]. Capturing the real experiences behind these numbers is essential.

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for doctoral stipend surveys

Single-select multiple-choice questions work best when we need to quantify experiences or want quick, comparable answers—ideal for identifying trends or sparking deeper conversations. They simplify the process for respondents, letting them choose from focused options before going deeper through follow-ups. A great use case is benchmarking how stipends compare across universities or disciplines, where disparities can be stark. For instance, a 2024 survey found that stipends in hard sciences are often significantly higher than those in social sciences [4].

Question: Do you feel your current stipend covers your essential living expenses?

• Yes, it is sufficient

• Partially, it covers most but not all expenses

• No, it is not sufficient

Question: What is your primary source of funding as a doctoral student?

• University/government stipend

• External fellowship or scholarship

• Teaching/research assistantship

• Personal savings/loans

• Other

Question: In which range does your annual stipend fall?

• Below $20,000 / €18,500 / £16,000

• $20,000 – $30,000 / €18,500 – €27,500 / £16,000 – £23,000

• Above $30,000 / €27,500 / £23,000

When to follow up with "why?" If a respondent selects “No, it is not sufficient” to the first question or marks a low stipend range, following up with "Can you share why you feel your stipend is insufficient?" uncovers specifics—unexpected expenses, family commitments, or local cost of living. This drives richer insights and actionable feedback.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Always provide an “Other” option when the answer landscape might be broader than your listed choices. Follow-up questions here can reveal funding sources or concerns you hadn’t anticipated and help close knowledge gaps you didn’t know existed.

Should you use an NPS-type question for doctoral funding surveys?

NPS (Net Promoter Score) questions aren’t just for brands—they fit perfectly when you want to gauge loyalty or satisfaction on a relative scale, like asking, “How likely are you to recommend your doctoral program’s funding support to a peer?” For funding and stipend adequacy, this quickly signals overall sentiment and can trigger tailored follow-ups for promoters, detractors, and everyone in between. If you’re interested in trying out an NPS approach for your audience, you can instantly spin up a dedicated NPS survey for college doctoral students about funding and stipend adequacy.

The power of follow-up questions

Follow-up questions transform a survey from a checklist to a true conversation. Automated follow-ups, especially those powered by AI—like in Specific’s dynamic AI follow-up questions—dig deeper based on each respondent’s unique answer. This lets us clarify, probe, and surface richer context that traditional surveys often miss. Instead of sending emails or scheduling interviews for every ambiguous answer, you capture the “why” right as the respondent is engaged. That’s a massive time-saver and elevates the quality of insights.

• College doctoral student: “My stipend covers rent, but not much else.”

• AI follow-up: “What additional expenses are most challenging to cover with your current stipend?”

How many follow-ups to ask? In most cases, 2–3 well-placed follow-ups are enough to reach deeper understanding. It’s always smart to enable a skip option or stop once you’ve learned what you need—Specific makes this easy to configure, tailoring the depth of conversation to your goals.

This makes it a conversational survey: With these adaptive follow-ups, your survey feels more like chatting with a knowledgeable colleague who actually cares, rather than ticking boxes on a form.

AI survey response analysis, qualitative data summarization, effortless insight extraction: Even with all this unstructured text, AI-powered analysis makes it easy to synthesize feedback, spot patterns, and report actionable themes—no manual coding required.

These automated, smart follow-ups are still a new concept for many—if you haven’t tried them, generate a survey and see how much more valuable your data can be.

How to prompt ChatGPT to generate great doctoral funding questions

AI is a fantastic way to brainstorm and refine survey questions—if you give it the right prompts. For a quick start, try:

Type this:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for college doctoral student survey about funding and stipend adequacy.

Want more depth? Always add context: describe your audience, your goals, regional differences, and anything you care about. Example:

I’m designing a survey for college doctoral students in the UK, US, Canada, and Ireland to understand if their stipends are adequate for living and academic expenses. List 10 open-ended and 5 multiple-choice questions, and indicate which should have follow-up “why” probes.

To make your question set sharper:

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

Once you see useful themes, go deeper—for example:

Generate 10 questions about how funding adequacy impacts doctoral students’ mental health and well-being.

What is a conversational survey?

A conversational survey blends the human touch of natural conversation with the structure of a survey. Instead of static, form-based questions, it adapts in real time based on each response—just like a good interviewer would. Our platform, Specific, is built on this principle. Using an AI survey generator means anyone can chat their way to an ideally tailored survey, skipping the pain of manual building and testing.

Why use AI for college doctoral student surveys? Because stipend landscapes change fast, and real concerns are buried in the details. AI survey generators let you stay on top of shifting realities, surface unexpected insights, and give your respondents a voice that forms and spreadsheets just can’t match. Every AI survey example you generate grows smarter, helping you see funding and stipend adequacy from every possible angle.

Specific’s conversational survey experience is best-in-class: respondents feel heard; creators get feedback that’s richer, more actionable, and a pleasure to analyze. If you want a detailed walkthrough, check out our guide to building a survey for college doctoral students about funding and stipend adequacy.

See this funding and stipend adequacy survey example now

Start gathering real insights on doctoral funding in minutes—see how conversational surveys let you capture honest, detailed stories you won’t find anywhere else. Get the feedback you need, faster and more meaningfully than ever.