Best questions for college doctoral student survey about teaching assistant experience

Here are some of the best questions for a college doctoral student survey about teaching assistant experience, plus tips on crafting them effectively. If you’re ready to dig deeper, you can generate or edit a custom survey in seconds with Specific—the process is lightning fast and optimized for meaningful feedback.

Best open-ended questions for doctoral students about teaching assistant experience

Open-ended questions are essential when you want to understand the perspectives, motivations, and nuanced experiences of college doctoral students working as teaching assistants. These types of questions tap into real stories and pain points, helping you get context that structured questions often miss. For doctoral students—who face a unique set of rewards and challenges as teaching assistants—open-ended questions can surface insights that drive real change, especially as research shows that 60% of doctoral students are offered teaching assistantships, making these experiences highly relevant. [1]

1. How would you describe your overall experience as a teaching assistant in your program?

2. What have been the most rewarding aspects of working as a teaching assistant?

3. What challenges have you faced in balancing teaching responsibilities with your doctoral research?

4. How well do you feel supported by your department or advisors in your teaching assistant role?

5. Can you share a memorable success or breakthrough you experienced during your teaching assistantship?

6. In what ways has your teaching assistant experience contributed to your professional or academic growth?

7. Are there areas where you believe your training or preparation for teaching assistantship could be improved?

8. How has being a teaching assistant influenced your satisfaction with your doctoral program?

9. What, if anything, would you change about how teaching assistantships are structured or managed in your department?

10. Is there something about your teaching assistant experience that you wish faculty or administration understood better?

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for doctoral students about teaching experience

Single-select multiple-choice questions work best when you want to quantify trends, benchmark opinions, or reduce cognitive load for respondents. For many doctoral students, it’s easier to pick a short answer first, then elaborate in a followup question. This approach allows you to capture key metrics—like satisfaction, workload, or support—quickly, and then prompt for more detail if needed. In fact, studies show completion rates can vary significantly depending on the type of assistantship and structure [2].

Question: Which aspect of your teaching assistantship has been most challenging?

• Balancing teaching with research

• Lack of support or training

• Managing classroom dynamics

• Other

Question: How satisfied are you with the support provided by your department for teaching assistants?

• Very satisfied

• Somewhat satisfied

• Neutral

• Somewhat dissatisfied

• Very dissatisfied

Question: Has your teaching assistant experience made you more interested in pursuing a career that involves teaching?

• Yes

• No

• Unsure

When to followup with "why?" Ask "why?" when you need to unpack reasoning behind a choice or when an answer lacks context. For example, if a student selects "Lack of support or training" as the main challenge, a followup like "What kind of support or training would have been most helpful to you?" unlocks the story behind the answer—often revealing untapped needs or opportunities for improvement.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Including "Other" lets respondents surface unique perspectives you didn’t anticipate. A follow-up prompt lets you dig deeper, uncovering insights that structured responses might miss—sometimes leading to totally new findings to inform policy or program tweaks.

Using NPS for teaching assistant experience feedback

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) question is a powerful tool for quickly gauging how likely a doctoral student would be to recommend their teaching assistant experience to a peer. NPS is widely used to measure overall satisfaction and loyalty across industries—and it applies in education too, especially when teaching and research experiences are linked to student retention. With “How likely are you to recommend being a teaching assistant in this department to another doctoral student?” on a 0–10 scale and a tailored followup (“What’s the main reason for your score?”), you get a pulse check and actionable context. Ready to try it? You can set up an NPS survey for doctoral students in moments.

The power of follow-up questions

Follow-up questions transform a simple survey into a rich, real conversation. With automated AI follow-up questions, you can probe beyond initial responses to clarify, expand, and get the full picture. This is especially crucial when working with open-ended answers—if you don’t follow up, you risk missing key details or misinterpreting feedback. Specific’s platform dynamically asks smart, relevant followups based on previous replies, so you get richer, more actionable insights while making the process feel natural for the respondent. Learn more about AI-powered followup questions and how they drive results.

• Doctoral student: "I found balancing teaching and research difficult."

• AI follow-up: "Can you share more about what made this balance challenging in your situation?"

How many followups to ask? In practice, 2–3 follow-up questions are usually enough to reach clarity. But it’s smart to allow respondents to skip ahead once you’ve collected key details. Specific lets you set this up so surveys remain engaging, not exhausting.

This makes it a conversational survey: Each question and answer builds on the last, mimicking real-life conversations—which keeps participants engaged and surfaces insights a basic form can’t.

AI survey response analysis: Even with lots of open-ended answers, AI makes it simple to analyze all responses. With tools like AI-powered survey response analysis, you can chat with your data, pull trends instantly, and surface common themes—no manual sifting required.

This next-level followup system is a fresh approach for research—if you haven’t yet, experiment by generating a survey and see the experience firsthand.

How to use AI (like ChatGPT) to write doctoral student survey questions

If you want to create your own doctoral student survey questions using ChatGPT or another GPT-based tool, prompt quality is key. Here’s how we’d do it:

Start with a simple, direct prompt:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for College Doctoral Student survey about Teaching Assistant Experience.

But you’ll get better results by giving more context about your goals, your audience, and what you want out of the survey—for example:

I am designing a conversational feedback survey for doctoral students who have served as teaching assistants. The goal is to improve the TA experience by understanding challenges and unmet needs, especially as they relate to satisfaction, training, and balancing research. Suggest 12 open-ended questions that will help gather deep and actionable insights.

Next, ask the AI to help you organize your questions for coverage:

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

Finally, dig into the categories that matter most to you:

Generate 10 questions for categories “Balancing Teaching & Research” and “Departmental Support.”

This stepwise prompt chaining leads to sharper, more targeted questions.

What is a conversational survey?

A conversational survey is a modern, chat-like survey experience that mimics a real conversation between the respondent and an intelligent interviewer—in this case, an AI agent. Unlike traditional survey forms, a conversational survey adapts on the fly, asks follow-up questions for clarity, and responds in context, making the feedback process more natural and engaging for doctoral students.

The shift from manual survey creation to AI-powered survey generation is huge. When you use an AI survey generator, you get:

• Instant question drafts, based on best practices and your audience’s needs

• Smart followup probes, tailored to every unique answer

• Conversational flows that keep students engaged and provide richer data

Why use AI for college doctoral student surveys? AI survey generation removes busywork and taps directly into expert knowledge—essential when you’re surveying an advanced audience with complicated experiences. Plus, AI-driven surveys like those from Specific offer a best-in-class conversational experience, ensuring that feedback collection is smooth for both survey creators and doctoral students themselves. If you want to learn more, check our guide on how to create a survey for doctoral students about teaching assistant experience.

See this teaching assistant experience survey example now

Put these question ideas into action today—the right questions, conversational flow, and instant analysis powerfully transform your doctoral students’ feedback into actionable improvement. Don’t miss out on the unique insights you can gain by making your next survey truly engaging and effective.