Here are some of the best questions for a student survey about technology access, plus tips for crafting them. You can build a powerful survey in seconds—with Specific, it’s easy to generate your own, tailored exactly to your needs.
What are the best open-ended questions for student survey about technology access?
Open-ended questions are essential for understanding the real experiences and diverse challenges students face with technology. They let respondents share in their own words, helping uncover needs or issues you may not have even considered. Use them when you want deep, qualitative, story-like feedback, or anytime you’re exploring a wide range of experiences (instead of just quantifying a simple metric).
Given that only 55% of the world's population had mobile broadband as of 2021—and stark divides exist by geography and gender[1]—it's clear why context-rich responses matter so much in technology access research.
Can you describe your general experience accessing technology for your schoolwork?
What challenges, if any, do you face with accessing reliable internet at home or school?
How do you usually solve problems you encounter with technology or internet access?
In what ways has access (or lack of access) to technology impacted your learning?
Tell us about a time when limited technology access affected your ability to complete an assignment.
What devices (computer, tablet, mobile phone, etc.) do you primarily use for your studies, and why?
If you need technical support, how easy is it to get help? What would make it easier?
What improvements in technology access would make your education better?
How did your experience with technology access change during the pandemic?
Is there anything else you’d like to share about your experience with technology at school?
What are the best single-select multiple-choice questions for student survey about technology access?
Single-select multiple-choice questions are perfect when you want data you can quickly quantify, compare, and track over time. They work well as conversation starters—sometimes, offering a handful of choices helps students respond faster and with less cognitive effort, especially if an open question might overwhelm them. After a quick choice, follow up with an open-ended or “why” question to dig deeper.
Examples:
Question: What is your main device for schoolwork?
Laptop or desktop computer
Tablet
Mobile phone
Shared family device
Other
Question: How reliable is your internet access at home?
Very reliable
Sometimes unreliable
Rarely reliable
No internet access
Question: Where do you most often access the internet for school?
At home
At school
At a library or community center
Public Wi-Fi (cafe, park, etc.)
Other
When to followup with "why?" Following up with "why?" is crucial if a response could have multiple interpretations or if you want to understand the underlying cause. For example, if a student chooses "sometimes unreliable" for internet access, a followup like "Can you describe what makes your internet unreliable?" can reveal issues with bandwidth, costs, or access times—information that's critical for taking meaningful action.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? Mix in an "Other" choice when you suspect your listed options might not cover all realities. This invites students to share unique circumstances, and your followup (“Please describe:”) can uncover insights you hadn’t anticipated, making your survey much richer in scope.
NPS question for student survey about technology access
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a globally recognized way to measure satisfaction and predict loyalty. For a student survey about technology access, an NPS question (“How likely are you to recommend your school's technology resources to others?” on a 0-10 scale) provides a simple, benchmarkable view of overall sentiment. Its real power emerges when you add smart follow-ups—for promoters, neutrals, or detractors—so you can fix root problems, not just flag dissatisfaction.
You can instantly build an NPS survey for students about technology access and get actionable context behind the score.
The power of follow-up questions
There’s nothing more frustrating than reading a survey response that says “It’s hard to get online” with no detail. The power of follow-up questions—especially when automated, as Specific enables with conversational AI—is that you can clarify and dig deeper, just like an expert interviewer on standby. This radically improves your data quality and saves researchers from playing endless email tag. Check out how automated followup questions work in Specific.
Student: “Getting support is tough.”
AI follow-up: “Can you share a recent example when you needed help and couldn’t get it?”
How many followups to ask? Most of the time, 2-3 targeted followups are all you need to get a complete picture. Specific’s survey builder lets you set the ideal depth—or automatically skip ahead when you’ve captured the context you wanted, so you never annoy respondents with repetition.
This makes it a conversational survey: The conversation feels natural, mimicking a real dialogue, so students stay engaged all the way through.
AI survey response analysis: Even with lots of open text and branching follow-up answers, it’s now easy to analyze survey responses using AI, with tools like survey response analysis that categorize, summarize, and highlight trends instantly.
Try using Specific to generate a survey and see how these AI-powered, automated followups make your survey smarter, more intuitive, and far less work for you and your team.
How to compose a prompt for ChatGPT or GPTs to generate student technology access survey questions
To get high-quality questions from AI, give it clear instructions. Here’s a basic starter prompt:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for student survey about technology access.
AI always works better when you provide more context about your audience, your goals, or the situation. For example, if you want to explore the impact of the digital divide, add this detail:
Generate 10 thoughtful open-ended questions for a high school student survey about technology access. Include questions that identify barriers related to socioeconomic background and home environment.
Once you have a list, it helps to have the AI sort questions into themes or categories:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Finally, focus on the categories you care most about. For example, say AI created categories like "Device Access" and "Internet Reliability"—now you can go deeper:
Generate 10 questions for categories Device Access and Internet Reliability.
What is a conversational survey?
A conversational survey uses AI to carry out a chat-like interview, instead of serving up a static form. It listens, probes, and asks follow-ups in real time—treating every respondent like a unique interviewee. Traditional manual surveys can feel cold, generic, or discouraging if a question doesn’t fit. With conversational surveys, students actually feel heard, and their feedback is richer in both context and nuance.
Manual Surveys | AI-Generated Surveys (Conversational) |
|---|---|
Require list-building and editing by hand | Instant survey generation with context-aware prompts |
No followup unless pre-scripted | Dynamically probes when answers need elaboration |
Harder to analyze open responses | Easy analysis with automated AI summaries and chat-like insights |
Impersonal UX | Engaging, familiar messaging UI |
Why use AI for Student surveys? AI-powered survey building removes all the friction—no form design, no coding, no survey logic headaches. You simply describe what you need (your audience and goals), and the AI survey generator builds an engaging, robust conversational survey from scratch, complete with smart followups and expert-designed question types. You get richer insights, higher completion rates, and less work on your end. Want to try it? Explore the step-by-step guide to building your own student technology access survey with Specific’s AI survey builder.
If you’re after an AI survey example that showcases best practices, expert question selection, and a smooth experience for both creators and students, Specific delivers the best-in-class conversational survey UX.
See this technology access survey example now
Experience a smart, conversational survey that collects richer, more actionable feedback from students, adapts to each respondent, and gives you sharper insights—fast. See the difference and create your own AI-powered survey today.