Here are some of the best questions for a parent survey about school culture, plus practical tips for designing them. You can use Specific to build a conversational school culture survey for parents in seconds.
The best open-ended questions for a parent survey about school culture
Open-ended questions are essential if you want to dig deeper. They let parents describe what they truly care about, highlight subtle issues, or share ideas that multiple-choice options might miss. Use these when you want rich, qualitative feedback to guide decisions or spark bigger conversations.
What three words best describe your child's experience at our school?
Can you share a recent moment when something about our school's culture made a positive impact on your family?
What do you believe sets our school apart from others, in terms of culture or environment?
Is there anything about the school’s approach to communication and community that you would change?
How included do you feel in school activities or decision-making processes? Please share examples.
Have you noticed any challenges or problems related to inclusivity, respect, or student wellbeing at our school?
What could the school do to create a more welcoming environment for all families?
Are there particular school values or traditions you appreciate? Why?
If you could suggest one thing to improve our school culture, what would it be?
Have you ever felt uncomfortable or unsupported by the school community? Please explain.
Open questions like these let parents voice details and stories data points can't show. When paired with smart follow-ups, you uncover not just what parents think, but why they feel that way. It’s also worth noting that AI-powered surveys tend to achieve much higher completion rates—up to 90%—because they adapt to responses and maintain engagement throughout the survey. That’s a big leap from the much lower response rates typically seen in traditional surveys. [1]
The best single-select multiple-choice questions for parent survey about school culture
Single-select multiple-choice questions are perfect for quickly quantifying parent sentiment or surfacing key trends. They’re easy to answer, can drive higher completion rates, and work well as an entry point for more nuanced follow-ups. Sometimes it’s easier for parents to choose from a list than think of a detailed answer on the spot—which often encourages more honest responses.
Here are some solid examples:
Question: How would you rate the overall atmosphere at the school?
Very positive
Somewhat positive
Neutral
Somewhat negative
Very negative
Question: How welcome does your family feel at school events?
Always welcome
Usually welcome
Sometimes welcome
Rarely welcome
Never welcome
Question: What is the biggest strength of our school culture?
Inclusivity
Respect
Parent involvement
Supportive staff
Other
When to follow up with "why?" When parents choose a specific option, your survey can add: "Can you tell us why you feel this way?" or "What influenced your choice?" This is key when you want to understand what’s behind a rating, uncover root causes, or gather stories that make the data actionable.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? An "Other" option on questions (especially about school strengths, challenges, or suggestions) lets parents name something you hadn’t considered. Following up with, “Which other aspect did you have in mind?” can reveal unexpected insights or areas needing attention.
AI-driven survey tools like Specific make setting up these logic paths intuitive. The combination of structured responses and open-text follow-ups means you’re getting quantifiable data and context in one sweep—and these kinds of blended questions are proven to drive up both completion and data quality. [1][2]
NPS-type question for a parent survey about school culture
NPS stands for Net Promoter Score. It’s a classic metric to measure how likely parents are to recommend the school to others—and it’s proven to be a straightforward way to gauge overall satisfaction. You simply ask:
On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our school to other parents?
NPS is valuable because it quantifies satisfaction and loyalty in one clear number. You can then use AI follow-ups to probe deeper with “What’s the main reason for your score?” for both promoters and detractors. To generate a tailored NPS survey for school culture, try it instantly via Specific's NPS survey generator.
With Specific, you get more than just a score—you get context on what’s working and what needs to be fixed, especially when AI crafts the perfect follow-up right after a parent responds.
The power of follow-up questions
Follow-up questions are where the magic happens in a conversational survey. Specific has a robust automatic follow-up question engine built in. Every follow-up draws on the context of the previous answer to clarify, probe, and explore, just like a live interview—but in real time, at scale.
With AI-driven tools, you can ask a few tailored follow-up questions as soon as a parent gives an answer. This works especially well for open feedback and helps turn fuzzy comments into actionable insight. Plus, automated follow-ups can save a ton of back-and-forth emails. For example:
Parent: “I sometimes feel uninformed about after-school events.”
AI follow-up: “Can you share an example? Which type of events were you hoping to hear about sooner?”
Parent: “There's sometimes a lack of inclusivity.”
AI follow-up: “Which situations or groups do you feel are less included? What could the school do to improve?”
How many follow-ups to ask? Two to three well-placed follow-ups usually surface the full story, but Specific lets you control this setting—for example, you can let parents skip to the next question if they’ve said all they want to share.
This makes it a conversational survey, where parents feel truly “heard.” These back-and-forths capture the nuances you’d get in a live chat but at scale.
AI response analysis, open-ended feedback, parent survey interpretation: Even with pages of open-ended feedback, AI can summarize, organize, and let you analyze responses from a parent school culture survey in minutes. The hard part—the time-consuming qualitative analysis—is handled by the AI engine.
AI follow-ups are a powerful, evolving concept. Try generating a survey and see the experience for yourself.
How to prompt ChatGPT to generate great parent survey questions about school culture
If you want to use a language model like ChatGPT to generate survey questions, here’s a good simple starter prompt:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for parent survey about school culture.
AI always works best when you provide ample context. Here’s a stronger approach that adds goals and background:
I'm designing a parent survey to understand perceptions of our school's culture, inclusivity, values, and communication. Parents come from diverse backgrounds, and we want actionable feedback to make improvements. Suggest 10 open-ended questions tailored to this context.
Once you get a list of questions, you can ask:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
This helps you organize your survey. If a certain category stands out—like "Inclusivity and Belonging"—you can then prompt:
Generate 10 questions for the category "Inclusivity and Belonging" in a parent survey about school culture.
Prompts like these get you much further, faster—especially if you’re planning to further refine questions in an AI survey editor.
What is a conversational survey?
Conversational surveys are interactive surveys that feel like chatting with a real person. Respondents type answers in natural language and the AI smartly adapts with follow-up questions, clarifying and probing for detail. This conversational flow is proven to increase both the quality of responses and the number of parents who finish the survey. In fact, AI-driven conversational surveys achieve completion rates as high as 70-90%, leaving traditional form-based surveys far behind at just 10-30%.[1]
Let’s compare manual vs. AI-generated surveys for clarity:
Manual Survey Creation | AI Survey Generation (Conversational) |
|---|---|
Slow, repetitive setup | Quick and dynamic—AI generates survey from your prompt |
Rigid, form-like | Feels like a natural conversation |
Limited follow-up logic | Real-time tailored follow-ups (AI probes for more detail) |
Manual analysis of responses | AI handles instant sentiment analysis and insight discovery |
Lower response rates (10-30%) | Higher engagement & completion (70-90%) |
Why use AI for parent surveys? AI survey makers not only save you serious time, but you get cleaner, richer, and more complete feedback—plus instant analysis. For a school culture survey, this means you uncover both statistics and stories you would never get from a traditional static form. AI survey examples and best-in-class user experiences—like those offered by Specific—make feedback collection and analysis smooth for creators and parents alike.
Curious how to set up and launch one? Check our step-by-step guide on creating a parent school culture survey.
See this school culture survey example now
Easily collect honest, in-depth parent insights about school culture with an AI-powered, conversational survey. Experience smarter follow-ups and effortless analysis in your next survey—start today!