This article will guide you on how to create an Ex-Cult Member survey about Exit Experience. With Specific, you can build such a survey in seconds—just generate your survey and start collecting insights immediately.
Steps to create a survey for Ex-Cult Member about Exit Experience
If you want to save time, just generate a survey with Specific.
Tell what survey you want.
Done.
You don’t even need to read any further unless you want to dive deep. You tell our AI what you’re after and it creates your survey with expert knowledge. It can even prompt respondents with follow-up questions to collect richer insights in real time. If you’d like to try building a survey from scratch or for a different purpose, give the Specific AI survey builder a go—it’s fast, intuitive, and gives you incredible flexibility for any audience.
Why this survey matters for Ex-Cult Member communities
There are good reasons to run an Ex-Cult Member survey about Exit Experience. If you want honest, life-changing stories, you need to ask the right questions, at the right time. The insights you collect are the foundation for designing real support systems. Here’s why:
Understanding the psychological and social challenges facing former cult members is not just nice to have—it’s necessary. About 18.2% of former cult members are already receiving psychological advice when surveyed[1], which shows just how widespread support needs really are.
Many ex-members enter a confusing ‘in-between time’ after leaving a cult, filled with uncertainty and self-discovery. Capturing this transition is essential for anyone building targeted programs or policy change[2].
Organizations that skip these surveys risk missing urgent needs and failing to develop interventions that actually help. If you’re not surveying your community, you risk building in the dark—missing what matters most.
The benefits of Ex-Cult Member feedback go beyond numbers: authentic feedback uncovers strengths, unmet needs, and new research themes you might miss in one-on-one chats or forums.
If you’re not running these, you’re missing out on critical insight to drive real change. Thorough, well-timed surveys unlock the empathy and strategy leaders need to support ex-cult communities in their journey toward healing.
What makes a good Exit Experience survey?
A strong Exit Experience survey for Ex-Cult Members does two things right: it asks clear, unbiased questions and keeps the tone genuinely conversational. You want questions that are easy to understand (no complex research jargon or leading statements), and you want the survey to feel more like a gentle conversation than an interrogation. People share more when they feel safe and listened to.
Bad practices | Good practices |
|---|---|
Leading or guilt-inducing questions | Neutral, open language |
Too many required fields | Letting people skip tough questions |
Robotic or clinical phrasing | Warm, relatable tone |
You measure a great survey by the quantity and quality of responses. High completion rates mean people aren’t dropping off in frustration, and rich, detailed answers mean you’ve tapped into something real. Conversational surveys, like those powered by Specific, are designed to boost both—more people finish, and their answers go deeper than checkbox forms ever could.
Choosing question types for Ex-Cult Member Exit Experience surveys
Choosing the right question types lets you capture both structured trends and the raw, unfiltered truth. A great survey blends open-ended prompts, multiple-choice questions, NPS, and timely follow-ups.
Open-ended questions are perfect when you want to understand feelings, stories, or complex motivations in respondents’ own words. They work best as opening or deep-dive questions, or anytime you need nuance. Two example prompts:
“Can you describe what the first weeks after leaving the group were like for you?”
“What support—if any—did you wish you had during your transition out of the group?”
If you want to see more great open-ended questions to ask, check our detailed guide on best questions for Ex-Cult Member Exit Experience surveys.
Single-select multiple-choice questions help you track common trends, segment respondents, and gather quick stats—perfect for demographic or situational questions. For example:
What was your primary reason for leaving the group?
To pursue personal freedom
Concerns about group practices or leadership
Pressure from family or friends
Other (please specify)
NPS (Net Promoter Score) question can measure willingness to recommend a support resource or group. This is especially useful when evaluating support programs for ex-members or understanding perception shifts after exit. You can even generate an NPS survey for ex-cult members about Exit Experience instantly with Specific.
How likely are you to recommend our support program to another person leaving a group like yours? (0 = Not at all likely, 10 = Extremely likely)
Followup questions to uncover "the why": These give you context, surface pain points, and help you understand “what’s behind” initial responses. They work best after key open-ended or NPS questions. For example:
“You mentioned struggling with trust after leaving. Could you share more about what led to those feelings?”
“What would have made your transition smoother?”
Effective followups aren’t about interrogation—they’re gentle nudges to help people open up. Want to go even deeper? Explore more follow-up ideas and expert tips in our guide on building high-impact survey questions.
What is a conversational survey?
A conversational survey feels like a back-and-forth chat, not a static list of questions. With AI-powered survey builders like Specific, you don’t need to design each question manually or worry about logic trees. The AI surveys ask questions and respond in real time, probing deeper where context matters—something traditional surveys struggle to do.
Manual surveys | AI-generated conversational surveys |
|---|---|
Fixed order and static questions | Adaptive, dynamic probing based on each answer |
Time-consuming to build and edit | Create in seconds; edit just by chatting with AI |
Lower engagement | Feels like a real conversation (boosts engagement) |
Why use AI for Ex-Cult Member surveys? AI survey examples dramatically reduce the time, cognitive effort, and expertise needed to launch high-quality, context-aware surveys. Specific takes this to another level, letting anyone—from support organizations to researchers—collect wide-ranging, detailed feedback. It’s especially good for delicate topics. Plus, editing is effortless with the AI survey editor: if you want to tweak your questions or the whole survey flow, you just tell the AI what to change.
Specific offers best-in-class user experience for conversational surveys, making the feedback process smooth for both survey creators and respondents. If you want to go deeper on building your conversational survey, check this how-to article on creating and analyzing surveys for Ex-Cult Members.
The power of follow-up questions
The difference between shallow and actionable feedback often comes down to projective, automated follow-up questions. Instead of just collecting surface-level responses, AI-powered followups—the kind at the heart of Specific’s conversational surveys—quickly dig into details that matter.
Specific’s AI asks smart follow-up questions in real time, contextualizing each respondent’s answer much like a skilled interviewer would. This is a game-changer—especially for complex topics like exit experiences, where each journey is unique. Automated followups save countless hours chasing down clarity via email, while also ensuring the conversation feels natural and continuous.
Ex-Cult Member: “I just didn’t fit in anymore.”
AI follow-up: “Could you share more about what made you feel this way?”
How many followups to ask? In practice, 2-3 followups are usually enough for most respondents, letting you strike a balance between depth and not overwhelming people. Specific lets you set a max depth and even skip further probing when you’ve collected the necessary detail.
This makes it a conversational survey—a dynamic flow where each response gets heard and explored, not just recorded. That’s how you get truly actionable insight.
AI survey response analysis used to be a nightmare with open text. Now, with Specific's AI-powered response analysis, it’s easy to summarize, theme, and chat about qualitative trends—read more in our guide to analyzing survey responses using AI.
Automated follow-up questions are a totally new approach—see for yourself by generating a survey and experiencing the dynamics of a true conversational AI survey.
See this Exit Experience survey example now
Generate your own Ex-Cult Member Exit Experience survey with AI in seconds. Capture deeper stories and honest feedback—all in a conversational, easy-to-edit format.