Here are some of the best questions for a parent survey about mental health support, along with tips to help you create surveys that bring out real insights. You can quickly build or generate tailored surveys with Specific in seconds—just create your own custom survey now.
10 best open-ended questions for a parent survey about mental health support
If you want richer, more nuanced answers, open-ended questions are your go-to. They help uncover unique perspectives and experiences you’d never catch with just checkboxes. These questions are best used when you’re after context, stories, or practical ideas from parents—especially given how personal and varied mental health journeys can be.
What has been your biggest challenge in managing your mental health since becoming a parent?
Can you describe any resources or support systems that have helped you or your family’s mental well-being?
What signs do you notice in yourself when your mental health is declining?
What strategies have you found most effective for coping with stress as a parent?
In what ways has your mental health impacted your relationship with your child(ren)?
If you’ve sought help, what motivated you to reach out for mental health support?
Are there any barriers you face when trying to access mental health resources?
How comfortable do you feel discussing mental health with healthcare professionals or educators?
What would make accessing mental health support easier or more approachable for you?
If you could design the perfect mental health support system for parents, what would it look like?
These kinds of questions are important because nearly half of all parents report facing poor mental health after having children—and for 70%, this directly impacts their kids. [1] It’s essential to give parents the space to share openly, so we can build the right support structures.
Single-select multiple-choice: best questions for mental health support surveys
Multiple-choice, single-select questions are super useful when you want to quantify trends or make it easier for parents to start a conversation—especially on topics that can feel a bit overwhelming. Sometimes, picking from a few short options is just what parents need before diving deeper with open-ended follow-ups.
Question: How would you rate your current mental health?
Excellent
Good
Fair
Poor
Question: What is your primary source of mental health support?
Healthcare provider
Family or friends
Online communities
I do not have any
Other
Question: How often do you feel overwhelmed as a parent?
Almost never
Sometimes
Most of the time
Always
When to follow up with “why?” After any choice—especially something as significant as “Most of the time” or “I do not have any”—it's valuable to ask why. For example: “You mentioned feeling overwhelmed most of the time. Why is that?” This uncovers context that turns numbers into actionable insight.
When and why to add the “Other” choice? Always include “Other” if your options might not cover every scenario or source. Follow up with “Can you tell me more about what ‘Other’ means for you?” This unlocks insights you never expected and helps you learn directly from parents’ lived experiences.
Should you include an NPS-style question for parent mental health support?
NPS (Net Promoter Score) is a simple metric that asks respondents how likely they are to recommend a service or support option. For parent mental health support, it’s useful because it captures both satisfaction and advocacy. If you’re offering programs or resources, asking how likely a parent is to recommend them highlights where you’re succeeding—or falling short. Plus, it gives you a straightforward benchmark for improvement. Try generating an NPS survey for parents about mental health support to see how this works in practice.
The power of follow-up questions
Follow-up questions are where survey magic happens. Instead of stopping at surface-level answers, you dig beneath the “what” to the “why” and “how.” Automatic follow-up questions, like those enabled in Specific’s surveys, let the AI act as a research pro—tailoring probe questions in real time for each unique answer. This is a total game-changer for extracting real value from parent surveys. Want to see how this feature works? Check out our article on automatic AI follow-up questions.
Here’s how things can break down if you don’t ask follow-ups:
Parent: “I feel stressed most of the time.”
AI follow-up: “Can you share what situations are most stressful for you as a parent?”
Without that gentle nudge, you’re left guessing. With a follow-up, you get real context that you can act on. Research shows that 48% of parents feel their stress is completely overwhelming on most days [2]—but knowing which situations drive this is what allows real change.
How many followups to ask? Usually, 2–3 follow-ups are enough per question, but always allow respondents to skip ahead if they’ve given a full answer. Specific lets you fine-tune this setting so your survey feels both thorough and respectful of parents’ time.
This makes it a conversational survey: The interaction feels like a helpful chat rather than a sterile form—which matters, especially for sensitive topics like mental health.
AI response analysis: Analyzing all those open-ended replies isn’t a chore anymore. We use advanced AI to synthesize, cluster, and summarize your data. Even for hundreds of responses, you can uncover themes instantly—learn more in our article on AI survey response analysis.
Try generating your own AI-powered survey with follow-ups and see how different it feels compared to traditional surveys. Parents deserve to be heard—and this approach ensures nothing gets lost.
How to prompt ChatGPT for great parent survey questions about mental health support
You can use ChatGPT (or another GPT-based AI) to brainstorm even more tailored questions. Start with a simple prompt like:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for a parent survey about mental health support.
But here’s the secret: the more context you give, the sharper your results. Try:
I'm designing a survey for parents who have children under 12 and want to understand what makes it hard for them to access mental health resources. Suggest 10 open-ended questions that help us discover real challenges and needs.
Once you’ve got a question pool, take it further:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Now, focus! Pick the most relevant categories to your project, and go deeper with:
Generate 10 questions for the category 'Barriers to access' and 10 for 'Effective support resources'.
What is a conversational survey (and how is AI survey generation different)?
Unlike manual survey building, an AI survey generator builds the perfect set of questions in seconds, based on your exact needs, goals, and audience. With a few prompts, you get a conversational survey that adapts, asks clarifying follow-ups, and feels like a real chat—not just a list of boxes to tick.
Manual Survey Creation | AI-Generated Survey (with Specific) |
|---|---|
Stake out every question, option, and follow-up by hand | Instantly generates expert-level questions with adaptive logic |
Limited flexibility—editing means starting over | Real-time AI chat updates and edits your survey (see AI survey editor) |
Static, one-way data collection | Conversational, with AI follow-ups that probe and clarify |
Manual analysis is time-consuming | AI distills responses, clusters themes, and supports chat-based analysis |
Why use AI for parent surveys? Because parents are busy, and their mental health is personal. A conversational survey respects their time and experience, automatically adapts, and ensures every voice counts. The best conversational survey tools, like Specific, turn feedback into actionable insights—without the burden of old-school survey administration. Explore how to create a survey like this in just a few minutes.
If you need an AI survey example or want to see how a conversational survey feels compared to traditional surveys, the difference is clear—efficient, engaging, and perfectly tailored to your needs.
Specific offers a uniquely smooth conversational survey experience, for both survey creators and parent respondents. The feedback process is seamless and engaging from start to finish.
See this mental health support survey example now
Start capturing deeper insights from parents about mental health support in minutes—get recommendations, see what’s working, and uncover the help families really need. Specific’s conversational surveys deliver more context and empathy with every response.