Here are some of the best questions for a high school freshman student survey about peer relationships, plus tips on designing them for real insight. With Specific, you can generate this type of survey in seconds—making feedback effortless.
10 best open-ended questions for understanding peer relationships
Open-ended questions are gold if you want to go beyond basic stats and actually hear students' voices. They help us discover nuances in students’ friendships and challenges that multiple-choice can’t capture. Especially with high school freshmen—where friendships are fluid—these questions surface stories and context that matter most.
Who do you consider your closest friends this year, and how did you meet them?
Describe a time you felt included or supported by your peers since starting high school.
What has made it easier (or harder) for you to make new friends as a freshman?
Have you ever felt left out or isolated? What happened, and how did you handle it?
What kind of activities help you bond with classmates the most?
How do you handle disagreements or conflicts with friends here?
What qualities do you look for in a friend at school?
How comfortable do you feel asking classmates for help or advice, and why?
Can you describe a situation where you saw someone standing up for another student?
What advice would you give new freshmen about making and keeping friends?
Why lean on open-ended questions? Research shows that peer acceptance and quality friendships before and during school transitions reduce loneliness, while prior negative peer experiences create barriers to new connections [2]. Open responses spotlight what’s working—or failing—right in your community from the students’ perspectives.
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for peer relationships
Multiple-choice questions help when we need to quantify trends or gently prompt students to reflect. They’re easy to answer (or kick off a conversation), especially for freshmen adjusting to new environments.
Question: How easy was it for you to make new friends this school year?
Very easy
Somewhat easy
Somewhat hard
Very hard
Question: In the past month, how often have you felt left out at school?
Never
Rarely
Sometimes
Often
Other
Question: Which of these is most important to you in a friend?
Trust
Fun
Shared interests
Supportiveness
When to follow up with "why?" It makes sense to follow up with a "why?" when you get responses that could mean different things. For example, if a student answers "very hard" to making friends, a follow-up like, “Why has it been hard for you?” helps you pinpoint if it’s about shyness, group dynamics, or past experiences. This deepens your insight and guides better support strategies.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? Always include an "Other" option if you’re not 100% sure you’ve covered every possible answer. Sometimes what you didn’t think of is exactly what matters most to your respondents. A follow-up here can reveal unexpected patterns or concerns—often the best learning comes from these ‘Other’ insights.
Should you use a NPS-style question?
NPS (Net Promoter Score) is typically used for businesses, but it’s a surprisingly practical format for student surveys too. Use it to ask: "How likely are you to recommend our school to a friend, based on your experiences with peers?" It’s direct and puts peer relationships at the heart of overall school satisfaction. The real value is in the follow-up: “Why did you choose that score?” You’ll often uncover issues like bullying, inclusion, and friendship quality—right where the numbers spike or drop. Try creating a tailored NPS survey with our NPS survey builder.
The power of follow-up questions
Open-ended, single-select, or NPS—almost any question benefits from smart follow-ups. Automated AI follow-up questions go deeper by asking clarifications and surfacing details in real time. That’s how you move from “surface” answers to real understanding, as students open up about stories, struggles, or triumphs.
Specific’s AI detects when a response is vague or surprising and instantly crafts a natural follow-up—saving you hours of back-and-forth emails and making it feel like a real conversation. It’s especially key when a student might mention challenges like bullying, inclusion, or friendship struggles (which are tightly linked to student wellbeing and social anxiety [3]).
Student: "Sometimes I feel left out during lunch."
AI follow-up: "Can you share more about what makes you feel left out, or who is usually involved?"
How many followups to ask? Two or three smart follow-up questions is usually enough to gather full context from a student. If you set up the survey in Specific, there’s an option to automatically move to the next main question after you’ve collected the information you need—keeping the chat natural and engaging.
This makes it a conversational survey. Instead of a cold form, respondents feel heard—like someone genuinely wants their story. This is the core of a conversational survey, and it’s why students open up more.
AI response analysis, auto-insights, rich qualitative feedback. Even with lots of unstructured feedback, AI makes it easy to analyze survey responses and summarize themes instantly. Specific’s GPT-powered analysis means you never have to manually read every word to spot social dynamics, identify bullying trends, or surface key patterns.
Automated follow-ups are a leap forward over standard forms. Try generating a survey with follow-ups now and see how deep, conversational insights can go.
Prompting ChatGPT (or other AI) for great peer relationship questions
To make the most of AI survey generators, your prompt matters. Start simple, then add context for better results:
Basic prompt—great to start:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for High School Freshman Student survey about Peer Relationships.
Improve output by adding context about your audience or goals. For example:
I'm a school counselor wanting to understand how freshmen feel about making friends and fitting in. Suggest interview-style (open-ended) questions that will help uncover challenges and positive experiences. Keep language student-friendly.
Once you have your list, ask AI for question categories:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
When you spot a category that really matches your needs—like conflict, friendship building, or inclusion—you can prompt:
Generate 10 questions for the category "Belonging and inclusion."
This workflow saves you brainstorming effort and uncovers new angles for your survey design. Or just use the Specific AI survey generator and describe your high school student–peer relationship goals directly—then let the AI handle the rest.
What is a conversational survey?
A conversational survey feels like a one-on-one interview or real chat—not a checklist. The questions unfold naturally, with dynamic probing and clarifications adding depth to every answer. In comparison, a traditional “manual” survey is static and often leads to incomplete or generic insights.
Manual Survey | AI-Generated Conversational Survey |
|---|---|
Generic, rigid questions | Adaptive, personalized questions |
Little to no follow-up | Digs deeper with tailored follow-ups |
Low engagement | Feels like a natural chat, boosts participation |
Manual review of responses | AI summary, instant theme detection |
Conversational AI survey generation changes the game. You get richer, more authentic feedback—especially on topics like peer relationships, where context and emotion matter. Plus, with AI-powered survey creation at Specific, you can iterate fast, easily edit with a chat interface, and collect feedback in any language your freshmen prefer.
Why use AI for high school freshman student surveys? AI survey examples generate more thoughtful, honest responses—even from shy or unsure students. Conversational, adaptive questioning draws out nuance, and timely follow-ups capture moments that rigid forms miss. In practice, that means you spot problems, strengths, and opportunities in how your freshmen relate—so interventions are specific and timely.
Specific is built for best-in-class conversational surveys: the smoothest experience for both survey creators and the real students answering your questions.
See this Peer Relationships survey example now
Try a conversational peer relationships survey now to reveal what’s really happening in your high school freshman community. Uncover what truly shapes friendships, belonging, and well-being—all with dynamic, clarifying follow-ups.