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Best questions for elementary school student survey about making friends

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Adam Sabla

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Aug 19, 2025

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Here are some of the best questions for an elementary school student survey about making friends, plus tips for crafting them. You can generate intelligent surveys in seconds with Specific and capture richer feedback from students on friendship.

Best open-ended questions for making friends surveys

Open-ended questions invite students to share detailed stories or feelings, offering deeper insights into their experiences. They work best when you want context and genuine emotion—not just a checkbox. This approach also helps students feel seen and heard, which encourages more thoughtful participation. However, keep in mind that open questions may sometimes result in fewer responses or more incomplete answers, especially with younger kids. One major study found that open-ended survey items typically had a much higher nonresponse rate (18%) compared to closed-ended items (1–2%) [1]; finding the right balance is key.

  1. Can you tell me about a time when you made a new friend at school?

  2. What do you like most about having friends in your class?

  3. If you want to make a new friend, what do you usually do?

  4. What makes it hard to make friends at school, if anything?

  5. How do you feel when you see other kids playing together?

  6. Can you describe a fun activity you like to do with your friends?

  7. If you ever feel left out, what helps you feel better?

  8. What do you wish classmates knew about you?

  9. Is there someone you’d like to be friends with? What stops you?

  10. What does “being a good friend” mean to you?

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for friendship surveys

Single-select multiple-choice questions are effective when you need clear, quantifiable data or want to make the survey easy and approachable for young students. They're less intimidating than long text boxes—ideal for elementary-aged kids—and can kick off a conversation that you follow up with more probing questions. In fact, response rates are generally much higher for multiple-choice items: studies from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and Early Childhood Longitudinal Study found response rates regularly above 80% for structured survey formats [2][3].

Here are three examples you can borrow:

Question: How many close friends do you have at school?

  • 0

  • 1

  • 2–3

  • 4 or more

Question: What helps you make new friends the most?

  • Playing games together

  • Sitting near each other in class

  • Talking at lunchtime

  • Other

Question: How do you feel about making new friends at school?

  • It’s easy for me

  • It’s sometimes hard

  • I find it very difficult

When to followup with "why?" If a student chooses “I find it very difficult” when asked about making new friends, the natural next step is to follow up: “Why do you feel that way?” Asking “why” in these situations uncovers hidden barriers or untapped needs and creates a safe environment for honest responses.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? “Other” lets students share options you may not have thought of—opening the door for unexpected, valuable insights. Always pair it with a follow-up like “Can you tell me more?” to reveal new challenges or opportunities for connection you might otherwise overlook.

NPS-style question for making friends—with a twist

NPS (Net Promoter Score) asks, “How likely are you to recommend...” but you can adapt it to measure comfort or happiness about making friends at school. Why use NPS with students? Because it captures both overall sentiment and offers a launchpad for tailored follow-ups based on their score. This format is quick, familiar, and easy to analyze, making it perfect even for young audiences. Want to see how it works for an elementary school friendship survey? There’s a ready-to-go template here.

The power of follow-up questions

If you want real insights, follow-up questions are the secret ingredient. You can read more about Specific’s automatic AI follow-up feature—it’s designed to dig deeper, in real time, based on what a student just said. This approach doesn’t just save teachers and administrators hours (no more chasing unclear answers by email!); it also gives students a more natural, supportive conversation.

  • Student: “I sometimes feel left out.”

  • AI follow-up: “Can you tell me about a time you felt that way at school?”

Without a targeted follow-up, you might miss why a student feels left out or how to help. But with real-time AI, you keep the conversation alive, and produce much clearer data.

How many followups to ask? Usually, two or three smart follow-ups are enough. Specific lets you limit follow-ups and skip ahead automatically when a clear answer comes—so you never wear out your welcome or risk survey fatigue.

This makes it a conversational survey: Rather than a cold checklist, it feels like a real chat. Students open up more, especially on sensitive or emotional topics.

Analyzing responses is easy with AI: With Specific’s AI survey analysis, you can instantly summarize and search conversation data—no matter how much free text you collect. AI quickly finds themes and suggestions, making qualitative analysis fast and actionable.

Seeing is believing: Generate a survey with automated follow-ups and notice how much richer your student insights become!

How to prompt ChatGPT (or GPT-4) for great friendship questions

If you want to brainstorm survey questions with AI, start with a broad prompt. For example:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for elementary school student survey about making friends.

The more context you give, the better the output. Try adding specifics about the age group, reasons for running the survey, or key themes you want to explore:

I'm a school counselor at a diverse elementary school. I'm creating a survey to learn about students’ experience making friends, and any challenges they face. Please suggest 10 open-ended questions that encourage honest stories and feelings.

Next, ask AI to organize the questions into categories for clarity:

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

After reviewing, focus on categories that matter most for your survey’s goal. Then prompt AI again:

Generate 10 questions for categories “Making Friends When New,” “Feeling Left Out,” and “Friendship Skills.”

Using these steps, it’s simple to develop high-quality, tailored questions for your student survey.

What is a conversational survey—and why is it a game changer?

Let’s be clear: building surveys by hand is slow, and traditional forms feel impersonal—especially for kids. AI survey generation with a conversational builder is different. It feels like a real dialogue, adapts on the fly, and gets better data with less friction. Here’s how they compare:

Manual Surveys

AI-Generated Conversational Surveys

Static forms, harder to complete

Feels like a chat, more natural

Difficult to probe for details

Smart follow-ups personalize questions

Time-consuming to build

Instant creation with prompts or templates

Manual data analysis

Automated, AI-powered insights

Why use AI for elementary school student surveys? AI survey examples show higher data quality: in one study, students gave more relevant and clear answers in conversational, AI-driven formats [4]. Automated surveys help you reach higher response rates and collect richer, more specific insights—fast. Building a conversational survey with an AI survey maker creates a friendly environment that students actually enjoy interacting with.

We take pride in delivering the best-in-class conversational survey experience—making feedback sessions smooth for both creators and young respondents. If you want a step-by-step guide, check out our tutorial on how to create a making friends survey—it walks you through the full process.

See this making friends survey example now

Create a conversational student survey about making friends and experience faster setup, smarter follow-ups, and richer feedback—discover the difference for yourself with AI-powered surveys.

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Sources

  1. Pew Research Center. Why do some open-ended survey questions result in higher item nonresponse rates than others?

  2. NCES (National Center for Education Statistics). The NCES National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Data Quality

  3. NCES (National Center for Education Statistics). Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010–11 (ECLS–K:2011) Data Quality

  4. arXiv/Stanford University. Conversational Surveys via Chatbots: Better than Forms? (A user study with 600 participants)

Adam Sabla - Image Avatar

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.