Best questions for police officer survey about leadership trust

Here are some of the best questions for a police officer survey about leadership trust, plus practical tips for writing them. If you want to build a smart survey, Specific lets you generate a conversational one in seconds.

Best open-ended questions for a police officer survey about leadership trust

Open-ended questions are essential when you want to capture honest opinions and detailed experiences from officers—there’s no better way to understand real perceptions of leadership. These questions dive below the surface and provide space for nuance, which is crucial given trust is often complicated and deeply personal. You want these when context matters, not just stats.

For example, research shows that only 35% of officers feel treated fairly within their organizations—a number that points to the need for dialogue, not just scores. This lack of fairness has contributed to a 196% increase in voluntary resignations in policing roles over a decade.[1]

Our top 10 open-ended questions for this topic are:

1. Can you describe a recent situation where you strongly agreed or disagreed with a decision made by your leadership? What made you feel that way?

2. In your opinion, how does your leadership demonstrate fairness in decision-making?

3. What actions from leaders make you feel valued as a police officer?

4. How transparent do you feel senior leadership is when it comes to communicating important changes? Please share an example.

5. If you could change one thing about how leadership handles trust within your department, what would it be?

6. Describe any barriers you see to building trust between officers and leadership.

7. What could leadership do to encourage open, honest feedback from officers?

8. How confident are you that leadership would support you during a challenging situation? Why or why not?

9. Can you share an experience where you felt your concerns were genuinely listened to and addressed by your leaders?

10. What is one thing leadership could do immediately that would increase your trust in them?

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for a police officer survey about leadership trust

Single-select multiple-choice questions are powerful when you want to quantify trust, benchmark trends, and make the survey easy for officers to answer quickly. They’re a great way to lower the barrier for busy respondents, get everyone involved, and spark deeper conversation through follow-ups.

Question: Overall, how much do you trust your department's leadership?

• Fully trust them

• Somewhat trust them

• Neither trust nor distrust

• Somewhat distrust

• Do not trust at all

Question: Do you feel your leadership communicates decisions clearly and openly?

• Always

• Often

• Sometimes

• Rarely

• Never

Question: Which of the following best describes how you feel supported by leadership during public controversies or media incidents?

• Always supported

• Usually supported

• Support depends on situation

• Rarely supported

• Never supported

• Other

When to followup with "why?" Following up a single-select answer with "why?" is a game-changer: it draws out context, uncovers underlying issues, and helps leadership see the real reasons behind the numbers. For instance, if an officer says they “rarely” feel supported, a simple “Why do you feel that way?” will reveal situations or patterns that can be addressed.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? If none of the provided choices fits, “Other” lets respondents bring up unique perspectives you hadn’t anticipated. When officers select “Other,” a good follow-up captures their exact feelings or concerns—sometimes these unexpected responses point to emerging problems or innovation opportunities. Always follow up to clarify what they mean: those are the gold mines for understanding departmental dynamics.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) for measuring trust in leadership

Net Promoter Score (NPS) isn’t just for customers—it’s incredibly effective for internal trust surveys because it measures recommendation intent, which is closely correlated with trust and satisfaction. For police departments, NPS helps benchmark how likely officers are to recommend the department (and by extension, its leadership) to others seeking a career in law enforcement.

Embedding an NPS question provides a clear, quantitative barometer of trust:

• "On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend working at this department to a fellow officer, based on your trust in leadership?"

You can create an NPS-focused police officer survey on leadership trust instantly with Specific—give it a try and see how the results can offer a new perspective for department heads.

The power of follow-up questions

Great surveys don’t stop at the first answer, and neither does Specific’s AI-powered follow-up logic. By asking intelligent, real-time follow-ups, you capture the full story—not just vague sentiments.

Automated follow-ups accelerate learning by avoiding the endless email chase. Respondents feel genuinely heard (not just processed), and you get specifics that drive meaningful action.

• Police officer: "I don’t always trust leadership around big investigations."

• AI follow-up: "Can you share a specific example when trust was lacking during an investigation? What could leadership have done differently?"

How many followups to ask? For most police officer surveys, 2-3 well-placed follow-up questions per topic strike the right balance between depth and respect for people’s time. You can configure this easily in Specific, and always give officers a way to move forward if they’ve said all they want to share.

This makes it a conversational survey: Your survey stops feeling like paperwork and starts feeling like a natural conversation. Officers open up more (just as they would in a trusted chat), which is why conversational surveys outperform traditional forms.

AI survey response analysis: Even with lots of unstructured feedback, it’s easy to analyze responses using AI, identify common patterns, and dig into the nuanced themes that matter. No need to dread sorting through endless free text—Specific lets you interact with the data, ask questions, and surface actionable insights instantly.

Why stick to old formats? Try generating your own conversational survey and see the difference for yourself.

How to prompt GPT to write better survey questions

If you want to draft your own police officer survey about leadership trust using ChatGPT or a similar tool, start with a clear, direct prompt:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for Police Officer survey about Leadership Trust.

The magic really happens when you provide more context for AI. For example:

I am conducting an anonymous survey for police officers in a mid-sized U.S. department. Our goal is to understand officers’ perceptions of leadership trust, fairness, and communication, and to find actionable ways to improve. Suggest 10 open-ended questions that might uncover hidden issues and practical solutions.

Next, structure and categorize your draft questions with:

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

From there, you can pick categories to explore in depth, for example:

Generate 10 questions for the categories "transparency" and "organizational fairness."

This iterative approach delivers much more focused, actionable questions—whether you're using GPT directly or via a platform like Specific’s AI survey generator.

What is a conversational survey?

A conversational survey is different from a traditional form. Rather than presenting a static list of questions, a conversational survey behaves like a real dialogue—adapting language, following up on answers, and giving respondents the respect and flexibility of a natural conversation.

Here’s how conversational (AI-powered) surveys compare to the usual manual approach:

So if you want higher completion rates, more honest feedback, and a much richer data set to analyze, go for an AI survey builder. You don’t need to be a research expert—just describe your needs, and let the AI do the heavy lifting. You can even use the AI survey editor to tweak your survey in plain language as you go.

Why use AI for police officer surveys? Because trust between police and their leadership is nuanced—officers often have mixed experiences that need to be unpacked in a conversational, human way. Automated, conversational AI surveys trigger the kind of honest reflections leaders need to see real change happen.

For a step-by-step guide, see our how-to article on creating police officer leadership trust surveys.

Specific is built to deliver best-in-class conversational survey experiences—making gathering feedback and understanding frontline officers easier, faster, and more insightful for everyone.

See this leadership trust survey example now

Unlock actionable insights and honest officer feedback—see exactly how a targeted, conversational survey on leadership trust can transform your department’s culture and retention. Create your own in seconds with Specific and experience deeper engagement right away.