Best questions for community college student survey about diversity and inclusion

Here are some of the best questions for a community college student survey about diversity and inclusion, plus tips on crafting them. You can quickly build your own survey using Specific’s AI-powered tools for maximum insight.

The best open-ended questions for diversity and inclusion surveys

Open-ended questions give us honest, nuanced stories you just can’t get from checkboxes. When you want real experiences and actionable feedback from community college students, use these questions to spark engagement and uncover depth.

1. In your own words, how would you describe the level of diversity among students and faculty at your college?

2. Can you share a positive experience where you felt included or valued because of your background at this school?

3. What challenges, if any, have you faced relating to diversity or inclusion on campus?

4. Are there moments when you felt excluded or invisible? What happened, and how did it impact you?

5. How could staff or faculty better support students from diverse backgrounds?

6. What changes would make your college a more inclusive place for everyone?

7. How do student groups or events help—or fail to help—foster inclusion?

8. If you could speak directly to college leadership, what advice would you give them about diversity and inclusion efforts?

9. Do you see your identity represented in campus leadership and faculty? Why or why not?

10. What else should the college know about students’ experiences with diversity and inclusion?

Open-ended questions are best when you want context, stories, or to identify issues you might not have predicted. They’re especially valuable given the complexity of community college demographics, where in 2020, 29% of students were first-generation, 15% were single parents, and 20% had a disability—all groups that often face unique inclusion challenges [1].

Best single-select multiple-choice questions

Sometimes you need structured data you can quantify or want to help respondents get started. Single-select multiple-choice questions shine when answers are straightforward, and you want to compare results across your student body. For starters, these are effective:

Question: How included do you typically feel in campus activities and classes?

• Very included

• Somewhat included

• Not very included

• Not at all included

Question: How well do you feel the college addresses diversity and inclusion issues?

• Very well

• Somewhat well

• Not very well

• Not at all well

• Other

Question: Do you see faculty diversity that reflects the student population?

• Yes, absolutely

• Somewhat

• No, not at all

When to followup with "why?" Use follow-ups whenever a multiple-choice answer is revealing but incomplete. For example, if a student answers “Not very well” to the question about addressing diversity, the survey can ask “What could the college do better?” This opens up honest, actionable responses beyond the choice itself.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? “Other” is helpful when you’re not sure your options cover every student's experience. It invites students to clarify, sometimes surfacing insights you didn't expect. Follow-up questions can dig into those “Other” responses for golden ideas that could drive change.

NPS-style question for diversity and inclusion

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) approach isn’t just for businesses—it shines in education too. If you want to measure overall sentiment, ask students to rate how likely they are to recommend the college based on its commitment to diversity and inclusion. This creates a numerical benchmark you can track and easily communicate with leaders.

Specific streamlines this with a specialized NPS survey builder tailored for this topic—just add a follow-up asking “What’s the main reason for your score?” and get both a number and the context behind it.

The power of follow-up questions

Follow-up questions can make or break qualitative research. When you lean on automated follow-ups (like those described in our article about AI-powered follow-up questions), you can clarify responses instantly, catch misunderstandings, and pull out detail that would otherwise be lost. Specific uses smart AI to listen and ask more, just as a trained researcher would—making your survey a true conversation, not just a questionnaire.

• Community college student: I don’t really feel like I belong in group projects.

• AI follow-up: Can you tell me more about what made you feel that way during group projects?

How many followups to ask? We’ve found that two or three well-timed follow-ups are usually plenty. There’s no need to overwhelm respondents—just probe until you get clarity. Specific lets you set this up, including the option to move on if the information’s already clear.

This makes it a conversational survey, one that adapts to each student’s answers and feels like a real exchange, not a dry form.

AI survey analysis is easy. Even when you capture a lot of unstructured text, our AI survey analysis tools allow you to categorize, summarize, and chat with the data so you can spot themes and pain points quickly—no spreadsheets required.

Automated follow-up questions are cutting-edge and worth experiencing. Try to generate a conversational survey yourself—the difference is instantly noticeable.

How to compose prompts for AI to generate great survey questions

You can get even more value from AI (such as ChatGPT or Specific) by writing better prompts. Here’s how to guide an AI toward strong community college diversity and inclusion survey questions:

To start with, try this:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for Community College Student survey about Diversity And Inclusion.

For even better results, give more context in your prompt—for example, your goals, student demographics, or the type of inclusion you care about:

You are creating a survey for first-generation, working community college students about how well their college addresses diversity, disability, and inclusion. Suggest 10 thoughtful questions designed to elicit honest experiences and suggestions.

When you have a list of draft questions, you can ask AI to organize them into categories:

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

Once you see the categories, ask the AI to go deeper into specific areas you care about:

Generate 10 questions for categories “Campus Support Services”, “Faculty Representation”, and “Student Belonging”.

What is a conversational survey?

Conversational surveys are a leap ahead of old-fashioned forms: instead of ticking boxes, students have a back-and-forth with an AI “interviewer” that clarifies, probes, and listens. This is the core of Specific—our AI survey builder designs surveys that don’t just capture data, but adapt and dig deeper.

Classic Google Forms or SurveyMonkey can’t do this—they’re rigid and miss context. Here’s a brief comparison:

Why use AI for community college student surveys? AI-powered survey builders save time, gather richer insights, and adapt to each respondent. They’re also better for underrepresented groups, letting students describe experiences in their own words. This matters when less than a quarter of adjunct faculty share minoritized identities, even though 46% of students come from these backgrounds [2].

If you want a step-by-step tutorial, our article on how to create a community college student survey about diversity and inclusion walks you through the process—and covers all the AI advantages in detail.

Specific’s survey platform offers some of the best conversational survey experiences out there: mobile-friendly, adaptive, and context-rich for both creators and respondents.

See this diversity and inclusion survey example now

Kickstart richer campus conversations and uncover genuine experiences with a survey built for real context and clarity—see the results and insights Specific can deliver, and create your own survey in seconds.