Here are some of the best questions for a college doctoral student survey about professional development opportunities, plus tips on designing surveys that get revealing answers. With Specific, you can generate tailored surveys in seconds—no guesswork, just great data.
10 best open-ended questions for doctoral student surveys
If you want deep, unfiltered insight, open-ended questions are hard to beat. They let college doctoral students elaborate on their real experiences and frustrations, which is vital for understanding gaps and opportunities. Use these when you want stories, details, or to uncover pain points that might not fit limited answer choices.
What professional development activities have been most beneficial for your doctoral journey so far?
Can you describe challenges you’ve faced accessing professional development resources at your institution?
Which skills do you wish you could develop more during your doctoral program?
How have networking opportunities inside and outside academia impacted your career prospects?
What support (mentoring, workshops, funding, etc.) would make the biggest difference for your professional growth?
Tell us about a professional development experience that exceeded—or fell short of—your expectations. What made it stand out?
How do you discover new opportunities for career development beyond coursework and research?
What obstacles have prevented you from participating in desired conferences or publishing experiences?
If you could design the perfect professional development program for doctoral students, what elements would you include?
In what ways has your institution prepared (or failed to prepare) you for non-academic career paths?
Open-ended questions help reveal the real stories behind the numbers and are especially important when exploring new topics or where you don’t want to bias respondents with options. According to research, there’s a notable gap between doctoral students’ desire for job search opportunities and their actual access, especially when it comes to expanding networks beyond academia, with discrepancies hitting 40–60% in some cases. [1]
The best multiple-choice questions for doctoral students
Sometimes, you want to quickly quantify results or give respondents an easy entry into the survey. Single-select multiple-choice questions are perfect for identifying widespread needs or starting a conversation—especially when respondents may not have the energy to draft a detailed answer up front.
Question: Which professional development activities do you value the most?
Resume review or career coaching
Presenting at national conferences
Publishing in peer-reviewed journals
Networking with professionals outside academia
Other
Question: How satisfied are you with the current professional development opportunities provided by your program?
Very satisfied
Somewhat satisfied
Neutral
Somewhat dissatisfied
Very dissatisfied
Question: What is the biggest barrier you face in accessing professional development resources?
Lack of information
Insufficient funding
Time constraints
Limited opportunities relevant to my goals
Other
When to followup with "why?" It’s great practice to add a “why?” follow-up to key multiple-choice or rating questions. For example, if a student selects “Limited opportunities relevant to my goals,” ask them, “Can you elaborate on which opportunities you feel are missing or why they don’t fit your goals?” These follow-ups transform surface-level answers into actionable insight.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? Always include “Other” when you can’t guarantee your list covers every reality. Follow up with an open-ended question so students can explain—a move proven to uncover valuable, unexpected insights that static lists can’t surface.
NPS: Net Promoter Score for doctoral professional development
NPS (Net Promoter Score) surveys are more than just customer satisfaction tools—they’re excellent for benchmarking how likely doctoral students are to recommend their institution’s professional development support to peers. We ask: “On a scale from 0–10, how likely are you to recommend the professional development opportunities offered by your program to other doctoral students?” AI-powered conversational surveys like those on Specific can layer on smart follow-ups, uncovering the “why” behind each score. You can start building an NPS survey for doctoral development in seconds.
Given that doctoral students highly value career coaching (84.4%) and conference presentations (79.3%) as professional development, yet often encounter institutional gaps, an NPS question plus open-ended follow-ups provides both a metric and the nuanced stories behind the score. [1]
The power of follow-up questions
We’re big fans of probing follow-up questions—that’s why Specific’s AI-powered surveys shine here. Follow-ups turn vague, “meh” answers into rich context, making data analysis far more useful. AI asks for clarification, reasons, or examples, just like an expert interviewer. This saves you days of chasing down missing details by email and gets respondents talking in a more natural way. For example:
College Doctoral Student: “I wish we had more opportunities.”
AI follow-up: “What types of opportunities do you feel are missing? Are there specific events, workshops, or resources you’d like to see?”
Imagine the contrast if you only collected the first response—you wouldn’t know what to improve or how to advocate for students.
How many followups to ask? Generally, 2-3 well-crafted follow-up questions are plenty. Specific lets you adjust settings so the AI moves on when it gets the insights you want—no survey fatigue, but no missed chances for clarity, either.
This makes it a conversational survey: Every response can blossom into a back-and-forth exchange, just like a real conversation, which boosts engagement and insight.
AI survey response analysis, unstructured text, easy reporting: Even when you get tons of narrative feedback—as you will with doctoral students—analyzing it is a breeze with AI. Check out our guide on how to analyze survey responses with AI.
Ready to see this in action? Try generating a survey to test out what a truly conversational survey feels like.
How to prompt ChatGPT for better doctoral survey questions
Want to craft your own questions or brainstorm with an AI like ChatGPT? Start simple, then provide more context for sharper results.
Basic survey prompt for question ideas:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for College Doctoral Student survey about Professional Development Opportunities.
But AI gets smarter when it knows more about your goals. For example:
I run a career development office at a large university and want to improve our support for STEM doctoral students transitioning to industry. Suggest 10 open-ended questions to uncover unmet needs and barriers related to professional development opportunities.
Next, organize what you get. Try:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Now, pick the themes most relevant to you (let’s say, “Networking,” “Job Search Resources,” or “Non-Academic Careers”), and use:
Generate 10 questions for categories Networking and Non-Academic Careers.
The more detail you give, the more targeted and actionable your survey questions will be.
What is a conversational survey?
A conversational survey feels like a natural back-and-forth, not a one-sided form. Instead of answering the same static questions as everyone else, participants get dynamic, context-aware follow-ups based on their earlier comments. With AI survey generators like Specific’s AI survey maker, you design the goals and focus—and the AI handles both the scripting and adaptive conversation in real time.
Let’s compare:
Manual Surveys | AI-Generated Surveys |
---|---|
Rigid structure | Dynamic structure |
Long survey times, high abandonment (40–55%). | 70–80% completion rates, lower drop-off (15–25%) [2]. |
Why use AI for college doctoral student surveys? AI-generated surveys are proven to boost completion rates, engagement, and data depth—perfect for busy doctoral students. The adaptive probing means you better understand motivations and context in ways forms simply can’t. Conversational AI tools are used by over 90% of respondents in tech and productivity sectors, and the same agility works wonders in education, research, and student support too. [3]
All of this comes together in Specific’s user-friendly experience, making every step—from creation to analysis—a smooth, engaging process for both survey creators and college doctoral student respondents. If you want a step-by-step walkthrough, see our detailed guide on how to create a doctoral student survey on professional development.
See this professional development opportunities survey example now
Experience the impact of smart, conversational AI surveys—see what insights you can get from doctoral students with survey questions that adapt, clarify, and drive real improvement. Your next standout survey is just a click away.