Best questions for high school freshman student survey about school climate

Here are some of the best questions for a high school freshman student survey about school climate, plus tips on how to create them. If you want to build a great survey quickly, you can generate one with Specific in seconds—just describe what you need.

What are the best open-ended questions for a high school freshman student survey about school climate?

Open-ended questions are great for surfacing honest, unfiltered feedback. They invite students to share their real feelings and stories—often revealing far more context than you’ll get from checkboxes or ratings. Use them when depth and nuance matter, or when you want to hear what’s on their minds in their own words.

Here are 10 impactful open-ended questions you can use:

1. What has made you feel most welcome at our school this year?

2. Can you describe a moment when you felt uncomfortable or unsafe at school?

3. In your opinion, how do students at this school treat each other?

4. What’s one thing you would change to make our school a better place for everyone?

5. Have you ever witnessed or experienced bullying here? If so, what happened?

6. How do teachers and staff help create a positive environment for students?

7. What can adults at school do differently to support students like you?

8. Who do you turn to when you need help with a problem at school?

9. How easy is it to make new friends at this school? What could make it easier?

10. What else should we know about your experience as a freshman so far?

These kinds of questions allow students to express themselves freely and help uncover root causes behind statistics like 71.5% of students experiencing school bullying at some point in their education. [1] Getting this context matters—for both prevention and building a supportive climate.

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for a high school freshman student survey about school climate

Single-select multiple-choice questions shine when you need to quantify opinions or identify trends at a glance. They also serve as great openers for a conversation—sometimes it’s easier for students to pick a predefined answer before expanding on it, especially for sensitive topics. After a structured response, you can dig deeper with a smart follow-up question.

Question: How safe do you feel in your school building?

• Very safe

• Somewhat safe

• Not very safe

• Not safe at all

Question: Do you feel like you belong at this school?

• Yes, always

• Most of the time

• Sometimes

• Rarely

• Never

Question: How would you describe your relationship with your teachers?

• Very positive

• Somewhat positive

• Neutral

• Somewhat negative

• Very negative

• Other

When to follow up with "why?" If you want to understand the reasoning behind a student’s choice, follow up immediately after their answer. For example, if a freshman says they feel “not very safe,” prompt: “Can you share what makes you feel unsafe or describe a time when you felt this way?” This brings out the context you need to act, which aligns with research showing that students’ perception of school safety correlates strongly with outcomes like lower truancy and higher academic performance. [4]

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Some experiences or feelings won’t fit your predefined options. Adding an “Other” choice and prompting students to explain helps uncover issues or strengths you hadn’t considered—essential for a climate survey, where unexpected insights can drive the best change.

NPS-style questions: Useful for high school freshman climate surveys?

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) question—“How likely are you to recommend our school to other students?”—is well known in business, but it works for schools too. It creates a simple metric and can spark important stories in the follow-up.

NPS makes sense here because it pinpoints promoters and detractors early in the student journey. That simple 0–10 rating quickly segments experiences and expectations at a glance—crucial since as many as one third of new students feel they don’t fully belong. [9] You can set up an NPS survey for high school freshmen in moments.

The power of follow-up questions

If you haven’t read much about automated follow-up questions, it’s worth exploring why they’re game-changers (see: automatic follow-up questions). Follow-ups draw out the context and “why” behind students’ first responses. At Specific, our AI agent instantly tailors follow-ups based on earlier replies, probing for clarity, and surfacing what truly drives experiences or concerns—helping you collect rich, actionable insights in real time.

• Student: “I sometimes feel left out in class.”

• AI follow-up: “Can you describe what happened the last time you felt left out? Was there something specific that could have helped you feel more included?”

Without a targeted follow-up, all you’d see is “sometimes feel left out”—not enough detail to make a difference.

How many followups to ask? From our experience, 2–3 focused follow-ups per question hit the sweet spot between depth and fatigue. With Specific’s AI survey builder, you can set a cap or let students move along once the info you need is collected.

This makes it a conversational survey: the interaction feels like a natural chat, not an interrogation—respondents stay engaged, and you get higher-quality feedback.

Survey analysis with AI is easy: For those wondering what to do with all the unstructured responses, our AI-powered analysis makes summarizing and distilling key insights simple—even from hundreds of conversation threads. You can ask follow-up questions to the data itself.

Curious? Try generating your own survey with follow-ups and see the difference it makes in the quality of data you collect.

How to compose a prompt for ChatGPT or other GPTs to generate great questions for a high school freshman student climate survey

If you want to design your own survey using AI, prompts matter. Here’s the simplest way to start:

Ask ChatGPT:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for high school freshman student survey about school climate.

You’ll get better results if you add more context about yourself, your goals, and specifics about the students or climate issues you want to explore. For example:

I’m an educator at a diverse urban high school. Our goal is to understand how freshmen feel about safety, belonging, and inclusion during their first year. Suggest 10 open-ended questions for a student survey about school climate.

Once you have a list, use another prompt:

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

Then, drill down on specific themes—maybe safety or peer relationships are your priority:

Generate 10 questions focused on safety and peer relationships in our freshman school climate survey.

This iterative approach can help you zero in on what matters for your unique school community. Or, if you’d rather skip to results, let the AI survey generator at Specific do the heavy lifting from your first prompt.

What is a conversational survey?

A conversational survey is a new way to capture feedback—it’s chat-like, dynamic, and respondent-centered. Instead of a cold list of questions, students answer prompts from an AI agent that piques curiosity, listens carefully, and probes deeper. This interaction increases both engagement and the quality of insights. Traditional/manual survey forms feel transactional, not human. AI changes that dynamic for the better.

Why use AI for high school freshman student surveys? AI survey tools go far beyond simple form builders—they actively listen, tailor follow-up questions, and analyze responses in real time. This leads to deeper student engagement and surfaces more nuanced feedback, especially around sensitive school climate topics, as shown by research on student survey platforms. [6] See more examples in our guide on creating climate surveys for high school freshmen.

We built Specific to offer the smoothest, most effective conversational survey experience—making both creation and feedback collection easy for everyone involved.

See this school climate survey example now

Experience how a conversational survey can transform feedback: hear authentic stories, create natural engagement, and unlock actionable insights—all powered by AI. Create your own survey and start listening today.