Best questions for middle school student survey about school safety

Here are some of the best questions for a middle school student survey about school safety, plus tips on how to create them. If you want to build this kind of survey in seconds, you can use Specific’s AI survey generator to create your own in just a few clicks.

Best open-ended questions for a middle school student survey about school safety

Open-ended questions give students the space to articulate their unique perspectives, highlight real experiences, and surface issues you might never have thought to ask. These types of questions are especially powerful when you want to uncover nuances, listen for lived stories, or understand emotions behind the data. Curiosity here pays dividends.

Especially since research shows that as many as 19.4% of adolescents do not feel safe at school, and some studies report rates much higher—sometimes as high as 69% [1]—digging deeper really matters. Here are our top picks:

1. If there was one thing you could change to make your school feel safer, what would it be?

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

3. What areas of your school feel the least safe to you, and why?

4. Who or what helps you feel safe at school?

5. Are there times during the school day when you notice students feeling uneasy or anxious about safety?

6. What should teachers or staff do to make students feel more supported about safety issues?

7. Are there any situations or places (like hallways, lunchrooms, or buses) where it’s easy for things to get out of hand?

8. What do you wish adults understood about safety at your school?

9. How do you and your friends talk about safety at school, if at all?

10. Is there anything else about school safety you think is important that we haven’t talked about?

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for a middle school student survey about school safety

A single-select multiple-choice question is a great choice when you need to quantify the student voice—get fast, crisp insights, or nudge a conversation forward. Sometimes, it’s just easier for students to pick a simple answer before you dig deeper. These are especially useful as springboards for follow-ups, where a short answer opens the door to more context.

Question: Which area of your school feels LEAST safe to you?

• Hallways

• Classrooms

• Cafeteria

• Bus

• Restrooms

• Playground

• Other

Question: How safe do you feel at school most days?

• Very safe

• Somewhat safe

• Somewhat unsafe

• Very unsafe

Question: How often do you worry about safety during the school day?

• Never

• Rarely

• Sometimes

• Often

• Every day

When to followup with "why?" Whenever you want to understand what’s behind an answer, follow up with “Why?”—after a multiple-choice selection or even a short response. For example, if a student picks “Bus” as the least safe area, a follow-up like “What makes the bus feel unsafe for you?” opens up crucial context. That’s often where the gold lies.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Including “Other” captures anything your list missed, unlocking fresh viewpoints. Students who pick “Other” can then explain their answer, and these responses will sometimes reveal patterns you never imagined. Getting those unexpected insights—especially via tailored followups—can be eye-opening.

NPS-style question for measuring school safety

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a trusted measure of loyalty and recommendation, but the approach translates well to gauging the sense of belonging and security. For a middle school student survey about school safety, asking, “How likely are you to recommend this school as a safe place to a friend?” (on a 0-10 scale) helps you spot patterns in perception. NPS results can be powerfully segmented and paired with open-ended followups: promoters, passives, detractors—each group needs a different style of probe. Interested? Try this auto-generated NPS survey for your context.

The power of follow-up questions

With conversational AI surveys, you unlock something unique: smart, automated follow-up questions that instantly clarify, go deeper, and make sense of initial responses. Automated followup questions like this are a game-changer, letting you dig in while the topic is fresh—no chasing down students for elaboration later. The result? You get direct quotes, nuanced feedback, and context-rich answers, without extra interviewer work or back-and-forth by email.

• Student: "I don’t feel safe in the hallways."

• AI follow-up: "Can you share what happens in the hallways that makes you feel unsafe?"

How many followups to ask? Two or three targeted follow-ups are usually enough to clarify meaning and surface detail, while keeping the conversation brief. With Specific, you decide the follow-up depth. A skip option means once you have what you need, the AI can pivot to the next topic—no wasted time.

This makes it a conversational survey: Instead of a cold form, the student experiences a genuine, two-way conversation—one that listens, probes, and adapts.

Easy AI insights and analysis: AI survey response analysis means all that open text and followup data is simple to categorize, summarize, and act on—even for long and nuanced responses.

Automated AI-powered followups are new, yet powerful—if you haven’t tried it, generate a survey and see what it feels like to collect richer feedback.

How to prompt ChatGPT (or other GPTs) to generate great questions for this survey

If you’re brainstorming, try this basic prompt:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for a middle school student survey about school safety.

But, for better results, always add context—your situation, your goal, who you are:

We’re conducting a school climate survey among 7th- and 8th-grade students in a diverse, urban middle school. Our goal is to understand where, when, and why students feel safe or unsafe, and gather actionable suggestions for improvement. Suggest 10 open-ended questions.

Next, ask GPT to sort the questions by category:

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

Once categories surface (for example: “Physical Spaces”, “Interactions with Staff”, “Peer Relationships”, “Outside School Grounds”), pick one and delve deeper:

Generate 10 questions for the category “Physical Spaces”.

Iterative prompting like this helps you design a survey that’s tailored, focused, and genuinely insightful.

What is a conversational survey?

A conversational survey is an interview-like experience where each question feels like a friendly, real-time chat—which increases honesty, engagement, and response rates. Instead of being faced with a static Google Form or checkbox grid, students get adaptive questions, just like in a real conversation. Thanks to AI survey generators like Specific, anyone can build a smart, conversational survey by describing what they need—no technical skills or templates required.

Here’s a quick comparison:

Why use AI for middle school student surveys? You get AI survey examples tailored to your exact context, without the bias or constraints of legacy templates. Plus, adolescents engage more with a chat-like flow; response rates and quality jump up.

With best-in-class user experience, Specific makes the feedback process smooth and even enjoyable for both creators and students. Every step, from AI-powered survey design to chat-driven response analysis, is optimized for real insight—not just numbers.

See this School Safety survey example now

Want deeper insight, better engagement, and context-rich responses? See how a conversational AI survey about school safety works and create your own with just a few clicks. Make every student’s voice count!