Here are some of the best questions for a student survey about diversity, plus practical tips to help you build them. When you’re ready, you can use Specific to generate your own survey in seconds.
Best open-ended questions for student survey about diversity
Open-ended questions let students express thoughts in their own words, capturing authentic experiences and feelings—especially important for diversity topics where nuance matters. They’re best when you seek honest feedback, deeper stories, or insights that structured choices might miss. For example, statistics show that students from underrepresented backgrounds often feel unheard, and in a 2020 survey, the majority of UK university students believed their institutions needed to do more to foster racial diversity and inclusion, especially Black students who felt this need most acutely. [1]
How do you feel about the level of diversity within our school community?
Can you share a positive experience you've had with diversity or inclusion at school?
Have you ever felt excluded or overlooked based on your background or identity? Please describe.
What changes would you suggest the school make to improve diversity and inclusion?
How do your teachers and classmates support (or not support) diversity in your classroom?
Have you noticed certain groups of students being treated differently? How did you feel about that?
Describe what “belonging” at school means to you.
What does the school currently do well regarding diversity and where could it improve?
How comfortable do you feel sharing your cultural traditions or beliefs here?
Can you recall a time when the school celebrated or recognized your culture or background? What did it mean to you?
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for student survey about diversity
Single-select multiple-choice questions simplify quantifying opinions or experiences—they’re the right fit when you want clearly structured data or want to ease students into a conversation on delicate subjects. Not every student finds it easy to articulate their feelings right away, so structured choices help them start and may lead to richer responses via follow-ups.
Question: How included do you feel at school?
Very included
Somewhat included
Not very included
Not at all included
Question: Do you think the school values and respects individual differences?
Always
Sometimes
Rarely
Never
Question: Which aspects of diversity do you feel are most talked about at school?
Cultural background
Religion
Gender identity
Other
When to followup with "why?" Ask "why" after a choice to discover the reasoning behind an answer. For example, if a student picks "Not very included," following up with "Can you share more about why you feel that way?" opens the door for a detailed, thoughtful response that structured choices alone can’t provide.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? Adding "Other" lets students bring up forms of diversity that might not be pre-listed, surfacing unexpected issues or perspectives. When asked what kinds of diversity are discussed, a student who chooses "Other" and explains it in a follow-up might reveal areas the school missed entirely.
NPS-type question for student diversity surveys
Net Promoter Score (NPS) isn't just for businesses; it’s a powerful tool for gauging student satisfaction with diversity and belonging. An NPS-style question cuts to the core: "On a scale from 0–10, how likely are you to recommend our school to a friend because of its approach to diversity?" This quantitative anchor, combined with open text follow-up, helps schools measure progress over time and benchmark themselves while capturing personal experiences. You can create a diversity-focused NPS survey for students in one click.
The power of follow-up questions
Automatic follow-up questions, like those described in Specific’s AI follow-up feature, are game changers for student diversity surveys. Using AI, follow-ups clarify responses and encourage students to elaborate, so you capture context and meaning that might otherwise remain hidden.
For example, if you don’t ask for clarification, things can get murky:
Student: "I feel left out sometimes."
AI follow-up: "Can you share a specific example of when you felt left out at school? What happened and how did it make you feel?"
How many followups to ask? Generally, 2–3 follow-ups are enough to get a rich answer without tiring respondents. Specific lets you control this, skipping to the next question as soon as your goal is reached.
This makes it a conversational survey: conversations feel natural, students feel heard, and you get deeper, fuller responses than with rigid forms.
AI makes analyzing responses easy, even if you collect pages of open-ended feedback. You can use AI-powered tools to quickly summarize and group results—see our guide on how to analyze survey responses with AI.
Automated follow-ups are a new and valuable approach—if you haven't yet, try generating a student diversity survey and see how effortlessly the conversation flows.
How to prompt AI (and ChatGPT) to create great student diversity questions
If you want to draft your own questions using AI, start simple and add detail for the best results. Begin with:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for student survey about diversity.
Don’t forget: greater context yields smarter questions. Instead, try:
Our school is a mid-sized high school in the UK with students from many backgrounds. We want our diversity survey to feel safe, supportive, and actionable. Suggest 10 open-ended questions for student survey about diversity, focusing on real experiences, feelings of belonging, and practical feedback.
Next prompt—help AI organize the questions:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Review the categories, pick the most relevant ones, and drill down:
Generate 10 questions for categories “Belonging,” “Cultural Identity,” and “School Support.”
What’s a conversational survey—and why does it matter?
A conversational survey feels like a real conversation: each question is tailored to what’s just been said, just like talking to a thoughtful interviewer. It’s quick to create with tools like Specific’s AI survey generator, and much richer than traditional “form” surveys.
Manual | AI-generated (Conversational) |
|---|---|
Requires thinking up every question yourself, structuring logic manually. | Survey is created by chatting—AI suggests and structures great questions for you, including automatic follow-ups and clarification logic. |
Hard to scale open-ended questions; response analysis is time-consuming. | Responses are summarized and categorized with AI in moments, even for long text answers. |
Rigid, impersonal, low engagement. | Feels natural, engaging, adapts questions to responses, improves inclusivity and participation. |
Why use AI for student surveys? AI brings expert-level question creation, instant follow-ups, and deep analysis—no specialized research background required. If you want an AI survey example tailored to diversity, an AI survey builder like Specific is purpose-built for richer, more actionable feedback from students. The conversational survey experience increases genuine engagement, saves you hours in design and analysis, and makes the feedback process painless for everyone involved.
Specific delivers the smoothest, most intuitive user experience for conversational surveys—making life easier for teachers, students, and school leaders alike. If you want to learn more, see our step-by-step guide to creating a diversity survey.
See this diversity survey example now
Your feedback journey can level up right away—see how a conversational AI survey captures real student voices, adapts in real time, and saves you hours on design and analysis. Create your own rich, actionable student diversity survey with just a few clicks.