Best questions for college doctoral student survey about lab culture

Here are some of the best questions for a College Doctoral Student survey about lab culture, along with tips to help you craft them. If you want to build or generate your own survey in seconds, Specific can help you create a highly customized lab culture survey in minutes.

Best open-ended questions for a college doctoral student survey about lab culture

Open-ended questions work wonders for capturing nuanced perspectives. They let college doctoral students describe experiences, expectations, and ideas in their own words—surfacing insights you'd miss with checkbox answers. They're especially useful to reveal what really shapes lab culture, spot problems early, and understand what students value.

Here are our top 10 open-ended questions for a college doctoral student lab culture survey:

1. What three words would you use to describe your current lab culture?

2. Can you share a recent experience that made you feel included or excluded in your lab?

3. How does mentorship in your lab impact your day-to-day research and personal growth?

4. What challenges or barriers do you face in fostering collaboration within your lab?

5. How comfortable do you feel voicing concerns or feedback in your lab? Can you give an example?

6. What is one tradition or common practice in your lab that you find positive or motivating?

7. Are there resources or support systems you wish were available in your lab environment?

8. How transparent is the decision-making process regarding projects and authorship in your lab?

9. What advice would you give to new doctoral students joining your lab?

10. In what ways has your lab’s culture changed over the course of your doctoral studies?

These questions invite stories and actionable insights, and they help spotlight the major themes shaping student experience in academic research environments. Open-ended formats are also key to qualitative analysis—a trend that matches the growth in using AI tools for research. According to Oxford University Press, 76% of researchers now rely on AI for tasks like summarizing and analyzing research content [2], so it pays to ask rich questions from the outset.

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for a college doctoral student survey about lab culture

Multiple-choice, single-select questions are perfect when you want to quantify opinions or establish a baseline before digging deeper. They’re also less intimidating for busy doctoral students than writing full sentences, which improves participation rates. We like to use these at the beginning of a survey or to validate patterns spotted in open replies.

Question: How would you rate the overall inclusiveness of your lab’s culture?

• Very inclusive

• Somewhat inclusive

• Neutral

• Somewhat exclusive

• Very exclusive

Question: How often do you feel comfortable sharing feedback with your advisor or PI?

• Always

• Usually

• Sometimes

• Rarely

• Never

Question: What aspect of lab culture would you most like to see improved?

• Collaboration

• Transparency

• Work-life balance

• Diversity and inclusion

• Other

When to follow up with "why?" If a student selects "Rarely" on feedback comfort, always ask why. Their explanation uncovers the root cause (e.g., "Past feedback was dismissed" or "Fear of repercussions") so you can address specific blockers, not just spot a problem.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Always offer "Other" if your options might not fit every experience. For example, a student could want emotional wellness resources or industry mentorship. Follow up on "Other" for unexpected insights you might never think to include.

NPS survey for lab culture: does it fit?

Net Promoter Score (NPS) works surprisingly well for academic settings. It boils lab culture down to a powerful, easy-to-track metric—especially when you want to compare across cohorts, departments, or years. The classic question is: “On a scale from 0-10, how likely are you to recommend your lab as a supportive environment for doctoral students?” It gives you a pulse on promoter/detractor ratios, offering actionable benchmarks.

With NPS, drill down by following up—a “Why did you choose that score?” can surface hidden strengths or weaknesses. Try out an automatically generated NPS survey for doctoral lab culture in minutes with Specific.

The power of follow-up questions

It’s no secret: the real gold in surveys comes from well-timed follow-ups. While a traditional survey might gather surface answers, an AI-driven conversational survey with automated follow-ups goes deeper, asking clarifying questions in real time based on each response. Learn more about automated follow-up questions and their impact.

Specific uses AI to act like an expert interviewer, capturing nuance by probing incomplete or unclear responses. This approach means you don’t have to chase down students with follow-up emails—saving hours while building richer context.

• Doctoral student: "Sometimes people don’t listen in meetings."

• AI follow-up: "Can you describe a recent meeting where you felt unheard? What was the outcome?"

How many follow-ups to ask? Two to three follow-ups usually give you depth without overwhelming the respondent. With Specific, you can control this—stopping at the right moment or skipping to the next question if the main point is covered.

This makes it a conversational survey: Each step feels like a real dialogue, not a cold form. Students open up, and you capture perspectives that a standard survey would miss.

AI analysis of survey responses: Even though lots of follow-up replies create extra text, it’s easy to analyze the responses using AI survey response analysis tools. You can chat with the data, summarize insights, and pull out trends without slogging through every line. Learn more about how Specific analyzes responses.

Automated follow-up questions are a new step forward. Try generating a survey with Specific's AI survey generator and see how dynamic and insightful the feedback can be.

How to use prompts for crafting survey questions with ChatGPT or GPT-4

Sometimes you want to flex your own creativity or work with ChatGPT. Prompts matter. Start simple, then add more context to get better results.

To begin, ask:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for College Doctoral Student survey about lab culture.

But context is key—add detail about your research goals, student demographic, or particular pain points for richer ideas:

Our lab is undergoing cultural changes after recent faculty turnover. Please draft 10 open-ended questions that address mentorship, collaboration, and diversity for a college doctoral student survey.

To bring structure, prompt the AI to organize by topic:

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

Once you see the categories, you can prompt deeper dives:

Generate 10 follow-up questions specifically for the "mentorship" and "transparency" categories.

You can also edit and iterate survey content with tools like the AI survey editor—just describe your updates, and the AI instantly rewrites the survey structure for you.

What is a conversational survey—and why does AI make it better?

A conversational survey feels surprisingly natural—less like a stuffy form, more like an interview. These AI-driven feedback sessions respond to what’s said, asking clarifying or probing questions on the fly. The difference from old-school surveys is dramatic, and it’s why so many college students are comfortable giving honest, detailed feedback in this format.

The adoption of AI for research in academia is no longer niche. 86% of college students already use AI in their studies, with over half relying on it weekly [1]. That means lab survey methods need to evolve too—meeting students where they are, and taking advantage of tools that actually improve response quality.

Why use AI for college doctoral student surveys? The answer is speed, accuracy, and depth. AI survey generators like Specific make crafting, editing, and analyzing complex lab culture surveys radically faster—and allow teams to focus on the insights, not the process. Plus, with Specific’s AI, you get a best-in-class conversational survey experience that makes feedback collection engaging for both creators and doctoral student respondents.

If you want to master the workflow, explore our guide on creating surveys for lab culture research—it's packed with tips for academics.

See this lab culture survey example now

Get actionable feedback from doctoral students with a survey that adapts in real time, asks better follow-up questions, and delivers insights fast—see how a next-generation conversational survey transforms your lab culture research.