Best questions for police officer survey about burnout and stress

Here are some of the best questions for a police officer survey about burnout and stress, plus tips for designing surveys that dig deeper into real issues. You can build a police officer burnout and stress survey easily with Specific’s advanced AI-driven tools.

Best open-ended questions for a police officer burnout and stress survey

Open-ended questions give police officers space to voice their true experiences and concerns—especially on sensitive topics like burnout and stress. These questions uncover context, stories, and perspectives that numbers alone can't reveal. Use them to move beyond checkboxes when genuine understanding is your goal.

1. Can you describe a time when you felt most stressed or burned out on the job?

2. What are the primary causes of stress you experience as a police officer?

3. How does your work environment affect your mental health and well-being?

4. What factors contribute to a positive or supportive work atmosphere for you?

5. What changes would help reduce your stress or burnout at work?

6. How do you typically cope with or manage stress related to your job?

7. What support or resources do you wish were available but aren’t today?

8. How do long or irregular shifts affect your physical and emotional health?

9. What role does leadership play in either causing or reducing your stress?

10. Is there anything else you’d like to share about your experience with burnout or stress?

Did you know? Nearly 85% of police officers experience symptoms of stress or PTSD at some point in their careers, and almost 60% have reported symptoms of burnout. [1][2] Listening to their stories through open-ended questions is a key way to uncover meaningful solutions.

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for a police officer burnout and stress survey

Single-select multiple-choice questions work well when you need clear, quantifiable data or want to nudge officers into the discussion with straightforward options. They’re ideal for busy respondents who might hesitate with long answers. Start here, then go deeper with follow-ups.

Question: What do you consider the biggest source of stress in your policing work?

• Long or irregular hours

• Poor quality of leadership

• Exposure to traumatic incidents

• Lack of mental health resources

• Other

Question: How often do you feel burned out at work?

• Almost never

• Sometimes

• Frequently

• Almost always

Question: Are you able to access mental health resources at your workplace when needed?

• Yes, easily

• Yes, with difficulty

• No

When to follow up with “why?” People often select an option but their reasoning or context is highly valuable—even surprising. For example, after someone selects “Poor quality of leadership,” a good follow-up is: “Can you describe specific ways leadership has impacted your stress on the job?” This uncovers actionable details.

When and why to add the “Other” choice? If you’re not sure you’ve covered all possible causes of stress, “Other” gives respondents a chance to share what’s unique to them. Smart follow-up questions can then collect these insights.

For example, “Other—please specify:” might reveal something as critical as “Community relations” or “Paperwork overload,” which would otherwise go unheard.

Should you use an NPS question for a stress and burnout survey?

NPS—Net Promoter Score—is widely used to measure satisfaction and loyalty but also works well to reveal overall engagement and willingness to recommend a workplace. For police officer surveys on burnout and stress, including an NPS question frames overall sentiment with a single, powerful metric.

This question might look like: “How likely are you to recommend a career in law enforcement to a friend or colleague?” Using a scale from 0 (not at all likely) to 10 (extremely likely), you can quickly gauge morale and career outlook. Segment responses and follow up with tailored questions for both promoters and detractors to discover root causes for each.

If you’re curious about implementing this, Specific has a preset NPS survey for police officers and burnout/stress that’s ready to launch.

The power of follow-up questions

Follow-up questions are where conversational surveys outshine traditional forms. Instead of collecting a wall of shallow responses, you guide officers into rich, detailed context—and capture nuances in real time. With automated follow-up questions from Specific, there’s no need to chase clarification via email or guess what respondents meant. The AI acts like a live researcher, digging deeper, making the survey feel more like a conversation than a form.

• Police officer: "I struggle with my workload."

• AI follow-up: "When you mention struggling with your workload, which aspects are the most challenging for you?"

This makes responses actionable instead of ambiguous and saves hours over manual follow-up. How many follow-ups to ask? Generally, 2–3 targeted follow-ups are enough for most topics. Specific lets you control and fine-tune this—enabling a “skip to next question” option when you’ve got the detail you need.

This makes it a conversational survey: Automating follow-ups creates a friendly, back-and-forth dynamic rather than a rigid one-way form.

AI analysis, instant insights: Even if you’ve gathered lots of free-form responses, AI-powered survey analysis makes it effortless to turn text answers into actionable summaries and themes. See how this works in our guide on analyzing police officer burnout survey responses.

Automatic follow-up questions are a new standard for deep feedback—try generating a police officer burnout survey and experience the difference firsthand.

How to prompt ChatGPT (or any GPT) to create police officer burnout and stress survey questions

If you want to use ChatGPT or a similar AI model to create great police officer burnout and stress survey questions, start simple and then build context. Here’s a basic prompt to begin:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for police officer survey about burnout and stress.

AI always gives better results with more context. Include who you are, your goals, what you already know, and what kind of responses you’re after:

I am designing a survey for active duty police officers to understand the sources of burnout and stress in our department. My goal is to improve officer well-being and identify practical solutions we can implement. Please generate a mix of in-depth open-ended questions and practical multiple-choice questions focused on day-to-day experiences, leadership, and mental health resources.

Once you have a draft list of questions, prompt the AI to organize them:

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

Review the categories, choose those you want to explore further, then ask for deeper coverage in those areas:

Generate 10 questions for categories 'Organizational Factors' and 'Mental Health Support'.

What is a conversational survey—and why does it matter?

Traditional survey creation is manual, time-consuming, and rigid. You brainstorm questions, format them, build forms, and chase follow-ups. AI survey generation, especially with tools like Specific’s AI Survey Generator, feels completely different. The AI handles structure, follow-ups, even editing—so you just describe your goals in plain language and get a polished, conversational survey ready to launch in minutes.

Why use AI for police officer surveys? Conversational surveys lead to much higher-quality feedback, particularly in tough fields like law enforcement where stress and burnout are sensitive subjects. The AI’s ability to gently probe, clarify, and summarize means you get clarity—fast. And you can always adjust, edit, or launch a survey right from chat using Specific’s AI survey editor.

For a deeper dive on building from scratch, check out our article on how to create a police officer burnout survey that really works. You’ll be amazed how smooth and respondent-friendly the process can be with conversational surveys from Specific.

See this burnout and stress survey example now

Explore a professionally-crafted burnout and stress survey for police officers and see how conversational AI and smart follow-ups can transform your understanding of officer well-being. Create your own survey in moments—engaging and insightful from the very first answer.