Here are some of the best questions for a high school junior student survey about school climate and safety, along with tips on how to build them. With Specific, you can generate a tailored School Climate and Safety survey in seconds—no manual setup hassle.
Best open-ended questions to ask high school junior students about school climate and safety
Open-ended questions encourage honest, detailed responses and let students share real experiences in their own words. They’re ideal when you want to uncover deeper context, new issues, or emotional impact—especially on sensitive topics like safety or bullying.
How safe do you feel at school, and what contributes to that feeling?
What are the biggest concerns you have about school safety?
Have you witnessed or experienced bullying this year? If so, what happened?
Can you describe a time when a teacher or staff member made you feel supported at school?
What changes would make you feel safer or more comfortable at school?
How do students treat each other at your school, and how does that affect the environment?
Can you share an example of when you or someone else felt excluded or targeted?
What could the school do to improve communication about safety concerns?
Are there places on campus where you feel less safe? What makes those areas different?
If you could change one thing about the school climate, what would it be and why?
Benefits are clear: research shows students who perceive their school as orderly are significantly less likely to engage in truancy, and those who feel safe report stronger trust with adults on campus [3][7].
Single-select multiple-choice questions for school climate and safety surveys
Single-select multiple-choice questions shine when you need to quantify responses or identify trends. They’re quick to answer, reduce ambiguity, and can kick off more meaningful followup. Sometimes, giving specific options makes it easier for students to engage, especially if they’re unsure how to phrase their answer. Here are three examples tailored for this topic:
Question: How safe do you usually feel while at school?
Very safe
Somewhat safe
Not very safe
Not safe at all
Question: How often do you see or hear about bullying at your school?
Daily
Weekly
Monthly
Rarely/Never
Question: Which of the following best describes how school staff respond to safety concerns?
They act immediately and communicate clearly
They take some action but don’t always follow up
They rarely respond or address the issue
Other
When to followup with "why?" It’s almost always worth asking “why?” after significant or surprising answers. For example, if a student selects “Not safe at all,” following up with “Why do you feel that way?” uncovers detailed concerns, enabling real solutions.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? Always use "Other" if you suspect your list isn’t exhaustive, or you want students to share unique experiences. Following up can reveal concerns you haven’t considered, bringing in unexpected insights that help shape future safety measures.
NPS-style safety and climate questions: make it actionable
Net Promoter Score (NPS) questions aren’t just for customer feedback. In a school context, they measure how likely students are to recommend their school to peers based on feeling safe and welcome. For juniors, this single question acts as a pulse check—trendy in both research and strategy. A simple “On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our school as a safe and supportive place to a friend?” can surface gaps and trends. You can quickly auto-generate an NPS survey for this exact topic in Specific.
NPS is easy to benchmark and discuss with staff, parents, or district leaders. Plus, follow-up questions to NPS responses give you a nuanced view—the “why behind the score.”
The power of follow-up questions
Want deeper insights? Automated follow-up questions are the secret sauce. With tools like Specific, AI can ask contextually smart follow-up questions in real time, just like a skilled human interviewer. That lets you gather rich context without endless back-and-forth emails or manual review. The conversation feels effortless—almost like a chat between researcher and student.
Student: "I feel unsafe in some areas during lunch."
AI follow-up: "Can you describe which areas make you feel unsafe and what happens there?"
Without the follow-up, insights are vague, but with it, you can act faster and more precisely. Learn more about automated follow-up questions and how they transform response quality.
How many followups to ask? Two to three follow-ups is usually the sweet spot. After that, let students skip ahead if you’ve already collected what you need. Specific lets you customize this so you’re never overbearing.
This makes it a conversational survey: The back-and-forth turns your survey into a lightweight interview, capturing stories—not just checkboxes.
AI survey analysis is now easy: Even if you collect lots of text, AI can synthesize and chat through findings instantly. See more in our guide to AI survey response analysis.
These smart, automated follow-ups are a breakthrough—try generating a survey and see the experience with Specific’s AI survey builder.
Prompts to create powerful questions for school climate and safety
If you use ChatGPT or any generative AI, here’s how to prompt it:
Start with this simple prompt to get a broad list:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for High School Junior Student survey about School Climate And Safety.
For richer, more on-point questions, give AI context about your school, demographics, or objectives—AI performs better with more details:
We are surveying 11th graders in a suburban high school to understand their feelings about personal safety during school hours, aiming to identify areas for improvement before the next school year. Suggest 10 open-ended questions.
Once you have questions, ask AI to organize them by theme:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
When you spot categories (for example, “bullying,” “staff response,” “safe spaces”), ask AI to drill down:
Generate 10 questions for the category "bullying at school".
What is a conversational survey, and why does AI matter?
A conversational survey feels like an interactive chat, not a boring static form. Instead of listing questions all at once, an AI-driven survey presents one question at a time—and dynamically asks follow-ups based on what each student says. It’s adaptive, personal, and fits modern communication styles.
Manual Survey Creation | AI Survey Generation |
|---|---|
Brainstorm and type out questions, edit, review, repeat. Takes hours. Easy to miss edge cases. | Chat your needs or paste a prompt, AI builds a complete survey instantly—and updates it on command. |
Hard to update—each change is manual. No context awareness. | Editing is fast: just tell the AI the change you want, it adapts the whole structure for you. |
No dynamic followup. Responses are static. | Automated follow-ups dig deeper, making responses vastly richer without extra work. |
Analysis takes hours, sometimes days. | AI analyzes responses in minutes, pulling out themes, making it easy to share outcomes with staff or leadership. |
Why use AI for high school junior student surveys? With AI, you can tap into real student sentiment—faster and more accurately. It boosts response rates, makes surveys feel less formal and more like real conversations, and can even personalize the flow in real time. Research shows that AI-driven survey tools analyzing open-ended responses in real time boost engagement scores and improve data quality [5][8]. Want to build your own? Read this guide to creating a high school junior survey in minutes.
Specific offers the best-in-class experience for building conversational surveys, ensuring both students and survey creators find the process smooth and engaging. Our focus: make sure your School Climate and Safety survey captures real voices, not just box-ticks.
See this school climate and safety survey example now
Your insights are only as good as your questions—see how easy it is to engage students and uncover what truly matters. Experience conversational surveys that adapt, clarify, and analyze in real time for richer, more actionable feedback.