Here are some of the best questions for a college doctoral student survey about work-life balance, plus tips for crafting your own survey. If you need to build a high-quality survey in seconds, you can generate it with Specific now using AI-driven guidance.
The best open-ended questions for work-life balance surveys
Open-ended questions help us get at the real stories—what’s behind the statistics, and why people feel the way they do. They’re perfect when you want students to share their honest experiences, highlight unexpected challenges, or suggest improvements in their own words. In work-life balance research, qualitative feedback is a must. For college doctoral students, it matters more than ever: A 2022 Nature Graduate Survey found that 43.1% of PhD students worldwide work 50+ hours per week, with nearly half ranking work-life balance as a top three challenge. [1]
Describe your typical week balancing doctoral work and personal life. What does a "busy" week look like for you?
What strategies, if any, do you use to maintain a balance between your academic responsibilities and your life outside academia?
Have you ever experienced burnout or overwhelming stress during your doctoral studies? How did you respond to it?
What aspects of your program support or hinder your work-life balance?
How does your current level of work-life balance impact your well-being or academic performance?
What resources (campus services, advisors, peer support, etc.) have helped you manage your studies and personal life?
If you could change one thing about your doctoral experience to improve your work-life balance, what would it be?
How do you manage multiple roles (student, employee, parent, partner, etc.) while pursuing your doctorate?
In what ways has your work-life balance changed since starting your doctoral program?
What advice would you give to future doctoral students about balancing academic and personal life?
Using open-ended questions in your AI survey helps you hear the nuance—the daily trade-offs, the motivators, the things data alone can’t capture.
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for doctoral student work-life balance
Single-select multiple-choice questions are great when you want a clear, quantifiable snapshot: quick to answer, easy to summarize. If you want to kick off a conversation or ease someone into tougher questions, use these up front. Sometimes, it’s easier to choose from a few options than to compose a full answer—especially when time is scarce. And for doctoral students, time poverty is real: research shows students frequently feel they have too many tasks and insufficient time, which hurts their well-being and productivity. [4]
Question: How satisfied are you with your current work-life balance?
Very satisfied
Somewhat satisfied
Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied
Somewhat dissatisfied
Very dissatisfied
Question: On average, how many hours do you spend per week on doctoral work (research, teaching, coursework)?
Less than 40 hours
40-49 hours
50-59 hours
60 hours or more
Prefer not to say
Question: Which of these most often interferes with your ability to maintain work-life balance?
Research workload
Teaching responsibilities
Personal commitments
Financial pressures
Mental health challenges
Other
When to follow up with "why?" Follow-up questions are crucial when you want to understand the motivations or reasons behind an answer. For example, if a respondent chooses “Very dissatisfied” with their work-life balance, a great follow-up would be: "Why do you feel dissatisfied with your work-life balance?" This uncovers what’s driving their response and gives richer data than a standalone choice ever could.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? Always leave space for answers you didn’t anticipate. If a student selects "Other", Specific’s AI can ask them to elaborate. These open doors can uncover hidden stressors, unique commitments, or novel solutions you hadn’t considered, driving deeper insights with minimal friction.
Should you include an NPS question?
Including a Net Promoter Score (NPS) question in your work-life balance survey can yield a reliable benchmark: “How likely are you to recommend your doctoral program, based on its support for work-life balance?” NPS is well-known for its simplicity, making it easy to compare across time or programs. For college doctoral students, it’s a fast way to gauge holistic satisfaction and track shifts as you improve resources or policies. You can create an instant NPS survey for this purpose and discover at a glance how students feel about institutional support for well-being.
The power of follow-up questions
Automated follow-ups are the secret sauce behind conversational surveys. They allow us to dig deeper, ask for clarification, and gather context in the moment. In my experience, follow-ups almost always surface more relatable (and actionable) data. With Specific, we’ve built AI-driven follow-ups that react to each response in real time—making for richer, more engaging interviews. Explore more in our article about automated AI follow-up questions.
College Doctoral Student: “I struggle sometimes but try to manage.”
AI follow-up: “Can you describe what makes balancing your work and personal life most challenging for you?”
How many followups to ask? In practice, two to three follow-up questions are usually enough to surface what matters—enough for depth, without overwhelming. If you’re only aiming for clarity, enable a setting to move forward once you have your answer. Specific gives you full control over how deep you want to go, so you never lose your respondent’s trust or attention.
This makes it a conversational survey: Each exchange feels natural—the AI gently pushes for specificity, picking up on cues just as a human researcher would. It transforms the survey experience into a true two-way interaction.
AI analysis of open-ended responses: Even with lots of unstructured text, AI analytics make findings easy to extract and understand. Specific has dedicated features for AI survey response analysis, so you can chat with your data or export summarized insights at will. Curious how this applies? Check out our guide for analyzing doctoral student survey feedback with AI.
If you haven’t tried it yet, let the AI generate and manage your follow-up questions. You’ll be surprised at what new perspectives you uncover.
How to prompt ChatGPT (and GPTs) to generate great questions
AI works best when you give it a clear job. Start simple, and then layer on your goals or context. Here’s a baseline prompt:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for college doctoral student survey about work-life balance.
If you want better results, give more context—your background, what you’re hoping to learn, any specific focus areas. Here’s a detailed version:
I’m designing a survey for doctoral students at a major university to understand their work-life balance challenges, sources of stress, and the supports they find most useful. Can you generate 10 open-ended questions that will capture their experiences, needs, and suggestions for improvement?
Once you have some questions, use this prompt to organize them:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Then, focus on categories that interest you and go deeper. For example:
Generate 10 questions about time management and sources of stress during doctoral studies.
What is a conversational survey?
A conversational survey brings the warmth and nuance of a real chat to your feedback sessions. Instead of just ticking boxes, respondents feel like they’re having a meaningful dialogue—moving past basic choices to share richer, more complete stories. This is a game-changer for time-strapped communities like doctoral students, who already deal with survey fatigue and complex demands. In contrast to form-based tools, AI-driven surveys react in real time, clarify confusion, and make sharing easier for everyone.
Manual Survey Creation | AI-Generated Survey (Conversational) |
|---|---|
Write each question from scratch | Generate and refine with AI, instantly |
Rigid, less personal interactions | Feels like a genuine chat — dynamic and adaptive |
Manual response analysis | AI summarization and chat-based insights |
Slow to adjust or iterate | Edit questions, tone, and logic rapidly |
Why use AI for college doctoral student surveys? With so many students working long hours and juggling multiple roles, fatigue is real. AI survey generators help reduce the time spent building and analyzing surveys, letting you capture actionable insights fast—and act before burnout gets worse. Plus, organizations using AI feedback tools report up to a 30% boost in engagement and response rates compared to traditional approaches. [10] You can learn more about how to create a doctoral student survey for work-life balance, step by step, and make the most of these new tools.
When you use Specific, you’re tapping into a best-in-class conversational survey experience—instant setup, smart follow-ups, and a process that’s engaging for everyone.
See this work-life balance survey example now
Don't wait to discover hidden challenges your doctoral students face. With AI-powered conversational surveys from Specific, you create more engaging, insightful feedback experiences—uniquely tailored, fast, and effective. Try exploring these examples and transform how you understand student well-being today.