Best questions for parent survey about attendance

Here are some of the best questions for a parent survey about attendance, plus practical tips for crafting them. If you want to build your own survey in seconds, you can generate one with Specific—it’s fast and easy.

Best open-ended questions for parent survey about attendance

Open-ended questions are a powerful way to dig deep and surface context-rich insights from parents. These questions encourage thoughtful responses, revealing motivations and experiences beyond what a checkbox can tell us. They’re especially useful when we need “the why” behind attendance trends or want to surface new issues we might not have considered.

• They empower parents to share their unfiltered perspectives

• They uncover root causes—key for designing effective attendance policies

• They help spot emerging patterns or unique situations

Here are 10 of the best open-ended questions for a parent survey about attendance:

1. What factors make it easier or harder for your child to attend school regularly?

2. How has your view on school attendance changed over the past year?

3. Can you describe a recent situation when your child missed school? What led to that absence?

4. What kind of school support or communication would help you encourage better attendance?

5. Are there any health, family, or logistical challenges impacting your child’s attendance?

6. How do you feel about the school’s current policies around attendance and absences?

7. If you’ve received attendance updates from the school, how useful have they been?

8. Tell us about anything that would help you improve your child’s attendance (information, resources, flexibility, etc.)

9. What information do you wish you had about your child’s school attendance?

10. Is there anything else you want to share about your child’s attendance experience?

Recent surveys show that 31% of parents now feel more relaxed about their child’s attendance compared to before the pandemic, rising to 43% among families on free school meals. Understanding these perspectives—by asking questions that surface real context—is key to designing meaningful school attendance strategies. [1]

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for parent survey about attendance

Single-select multiple-choice questions make it easy to quantify answers and track trends over time. They’re especially helpful when you want clear, comparable data or when parents may prefer quick answering without composing a long text. These questions can break the ice, set up broader conversations, and help you focus on areas that need deeper exploration through follow-ups.

Here are 3 effective multiple-choice questions for a parent attendance survey:

Question: How often does your child attend school as expected?

• Almost every day

• Most days (1-2 absences a month)

• Occasionally absent (3-5 absences a month)

• Frequently absent (more than 5 absences a month)

Question: What’s the main reason your child has missed school recently?

• Illness

• Family obligations

• Transportation issues

• Lack of motivation

• Other

Question: How useful are the updates you receive from school about your child’s attendance?

• Very useful

• Somewhat useful

• Not useful

• I don't receive updates

When to follow up with "why?" A follow-up “why” can turn a basic response into a powerful insight. For example, if a parent selects “transportation issues” as a reason for absences, a follow-up like, “Can you explain more about the transportation challenges your family faces?” can help you identify fixable obstacles (like unreliable buses or lack of carpool options).

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Include “Other” when you suspect your options might not cover every situation. Following up on “Other” responses with an open-ended prompt (“Please tell us more”) can uncover surprises and trends you weren’t tracking.

Notably, about 49% of parents receive regular attendance updates—and a large majority find these communications helpful in supporting their children. Multiple-choice questions help you benchmark such trends at your own school. [4]

NPS-style question for parent survey about attendance

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a single, research-backed question that measures overall sentiment toward something—in this case, your school’s attendance process. It’s quick for parents to answer and gives you a reliable benchmark to track improvements over time.

The NPS question: “On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend your school’s attendance communication and support to other parents?”

• Promoters (9-10): Satisfied, likely to support attendance programs

• Passives (7-8): Neutral, less likely to spread positive word-of-mouth

• Detractors (0-6): Unhappy, may need more support or a different approach

This single question can spotlight satisfaction gaps—and, paired with a follow-up “Why did you give this score?” reveal ways to boost parent engagement. For a ready-to-use template, try this NPS survey for parents about attendance.

AI survey tools like Specific allow you to branch follow-up questions for promoters and detractors, driving feedback that’s both actionable and highly relevant.

AI-powered surveys achieve much higher response rates (70-90%) compared to 10-30% for traditional methods, making them ideal for NPS-style questions as well. [2]

The power of follow-up questions

Automated follow-up questions—done well—are often the difference between superficial and actionable insights. They transform a simple response into a full, clear story, all without back-and-forth emails or missed context. Check out our deep dive into automated followup questions for more on this key feature.

Specific’s AI doesn’t just ask static questions: it responds intelligently in real time to each answer, pushing just far enough to clarify, explore, and uncover nuance—like a skilled interviewer. That means you get richer, more actionable insights, faster, and your respondents feel genuinely heard.

Here’s a concrete illustration of the value of follow-ups:

• Parent: “We sometimes miss days because of transportation.”

• AI follow-up: “Is the main issue the reliability of public transportation, or is it something else? How could the school help?”

How many followups to ask?

In general, 2-3 targeted follow-ups are enough to reach clarity without fatiguing your audience. With Specific, you can set this depth—or even allow the AI to “skip ahead” when the answer is clear, making the survey as efficient and respectful as possible.

This makes it a conversational survey: Instead of a stale survey form, the experience feels like a flowing chat—a natural conversation that adapts live to what parents say.

AI-powered data analysis: Even with all these nuanced answers and branching conversations, it’s easy to analyze the responses using AI. You don’t need to sift through endless text; just check out how AI survey analysis for parent attendance surveys works in practice.

Automated, contextual follow-ups aren’t just a new feature—they’re a leap forward. Try generating a survey and experience how it turns every answer into a real dialogue.

How to compose a prompt for ChatGPT or other GPTs to create parent attendance survey questions

If you want to use AI directly to get survey ideas, great prompts make a huge difference. You can start simple:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for a parent survey about attendance.

But you’ll get even better results if you provide more context. Try including your goals, or describing your school community:

We are a small public primary school with diverse families. Please generate 10 open-ended questions for a parent survey about attendance, focusing on practical challenges, communication, and parent-school partnership. Our goal is to improve our understanding of family needs around attendance and uncover areas where school policies can better support families.

After you get your questions, it’s helpful to organize them into themes to spot gaps and overlaps. Ask:

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

Then focus on areas you want to dig deeper in. For example:

Generate 10 questions for the category ‘communication between home and school about attendance’.

This stepwise prompting approach yields survey questions that are both focused and insightful. If you want to quickly create a tailored, conversational survey, try using the Specific AI survey builder—which does all this organization for you.

What is a conversational survey?

Conversational surveys don’t look like long, intimidating forms. Instead, they’re chat-based, adaptive, and mimic a real conversation—making respondents feel heard. The AI listens, responds, and adapts the flow in real time. In our experience, this approach drives much higher engagement and richer insights compared to manual surveys.

Let’s compare the two:

Why use AI for parent surveys?
AI-powered, conversational surveys keep parents engaged and collect honest, thoughtful answers—critical for attendance challenges, which are often complex and personal. With Specific’s conversational surveys, you can design and analyze engaging parent surveys in minutes, not days, and uncover trends that traditional surveys miss.

If you’d rather focus on high-value insights and deep engagement—rather than form design, email chasing, and manual analysis—using an AI survey example or AI-generated survey with Specific delivers the best-in-class experience for both survey creators and parents themselves.

See this attendance survey example now

Ready to engage parents and get actionable answers? See how a conversational, AI-powered survey makes feedback richer, faster, and easier than ever.