Best questions for college graduate student survey about department communication

Here are some of the best questions for a college graduate student survey about department communication, plus quick tips on shaping them for depth and clarity. With Specific, you can generate a tailored, conversational survey in seconds—no manual setup required.

Best open-ended questions for college graduate student survey about department communication

Open-ended questions invite grad students to express opinions and stories, surfacing new insights you’d miss with checkboxes or scales. They’re perfect when you want feedback that’s rich and uncensored, especially around nuanced topics like departmental communication. In fact, studies show that AI-powered chatbots using open-ended questions spark more engagement and elicit responses that are more relevant and specific than traditional forms. [4]

1. What has been your most positive experience communicating with faculty or department staff?

2. Can you describe a situation where department communication helped you solve a problem or make a decision?

3. When you have questions about department policies, who do you turn to—and how effective is the response?

4. What challenges have you faced when trying to get important information from your department?

5. Are there specific moments when you felt left out of critical department updates or conversations?

6. In what ways could department communication channels be improved for graduate students?

7. How does your department handle conflict or difficult conversations? Share an example if you can.

8. How do you prefer to receive updates or announcements from your department (email, meetings, chat, etc.) and why?

9. Tell us about a time when you felt your feedback was—or wasn’t—acted upon by your department.

10. What advice would you give new graduate students about navigating communication with the department?

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for college graduate student survey about department communication

Single-select multiple-choice questions are essential when you want quick, quantifiable data or to kick off a deeper conversation. Many grad students prefer these as an easy starting point, especially when reflecting on complex topics. They pinpoint major trends and provide a launchpad for follow-up questions that reveal the context behind each choice.

Question: How satisfied are you with the communication you receive from your department?

• Very satisfied

• Somewhat satisfied

• Neutral

• Somewhat dissatisfied

• Very dissatisfied

Question: What is your primary source for important departmental updates?

• Email

• Department website

• Faculty meetings

• Group chat (e.g., Slack, WhatsApp)

• Other

Question: How frequently do you feel the department communicates relevant information to graduate students?

• More than once a week

• About once a week

• Once a month

• Rarely

When to followup with "why?" After a single-select question, especially if the answer is neutral or negative (e.g., "Somewhat dissatisfied"), ask, "Why do you feel this way?" This uncovers context, motivations, and specific anecdotes, making results actionable instead of just statistical.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Always include "Other" when listing sources of information or communication tools. It invites unexpected answers, ensuring you won’t miss channels that aren’t on your radar. Use a follow-up prompt to ask what “Other” means—these outliers can reveal hidden opportunities for improvement.

NPS question for department communication

Net Promoter Score (NPS) isn’t just for products—it’s invaluable for understanding loyalty and advocacy within academic departments too. Asking, “On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend your department’s communication to a fellow graduate student?” pinpoints promoters and detractors at a glance. This metric helps departments benchmark improvement efforts and dig into "why" using automated probing—especially relevant, since 71% of communication majors stick with their department, underscoring the impact of effective engagement [5]. You can try a ready-made NPS survey specialized for college graduate students and department communication.

The power of follow-up questions

Follow-ups transform surveys into conversations. Instead of static forms, you get a responsive experience that uncovers detail traditional surveys always miss. We’ve seen—with research and hands-on work at Specific—that asking for context (“Can you give an example?” or “What would help improve this?”) produces answers with more clarity and relevance [4]. See how our AI-powered follow-up feature works in real time.

• Graduate student: "I’m not satisfied with how events are communicated."

• AI follow-up: "Could you share a specific example when you missed important information about an event? What was the result?"

How many followups to ask? Usually, 2-3 follow-ups per question is optimal. You want depth, not fatigue—after you’ve clarified the main issue or collected a relevant example, let the respondent skip forward. In Specific, you can set precisely how persistent you want follow-ups to be.

This makes it a conversational survey: Follow-ups make the process feel like a natural dialogue, not an interrogation. That’s the magic of a conversational survey—it adapts, responds, and builds rapport.

AI survey analysis— Even if follow-ups generate lots of unstructured feedback, analysis doesn’t get harder. With AI-powered analysis, it’s easy to sort, summarize, and surface key themes using conversational search. The days of spreadsheet wrangling are over.

Curious? Try generating a survey with automated follow-ups and experience how AI captures deeper, more nuanced insights—effortlessly.

How to craft prompts for the best college graduate student survey questions about communication

Get great questions from ChatGPT and other GPT-based tools by treating your prompt like a real brief. Here’s a solid starting point:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for College Graduate Student survey about Department Communication.

You’ll get better results if you offer more context: who you are, why you care, and the kind of feedback you want. Try something like:

I’m creating a survey for college graduate students to understand how well our department communicates about important updates, policies, and events. Please suggest 10 open-ended questions that surface specific examples of communication challenges and preferred channels.

Next step: sort all suggested questions by topic to spot what matters most. Use this follow-up:

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

Once you know the core themes (e.g., "faculty responsiveness," "communication channels," "frequency of updates"), double down:

Generate 10 questions for the category "faculty responsiveness." Suggest questions that surface both positive and negative experiences.

What makes a survey conversational?

A conversational survey is driven by back-and-forth interactions—not just checkboxes, but smartly sequenced questions and real-time probing. For college graduate student research, this approach is transformative. Instead of collecting fragments, you gather full stories, thanks to ongoing dialogue. With AI survey generators like Specific, you create this experience without scripting complex logic or coding follow-ups from scratch.

Why use AI for college graduate student surveys? Most grad students are already comfortable with conversational AI—86% use AI regularly in their studies, with over half relying on it at least weekly [1][2][3]. This means they’re ready for interactive, conversational surveys that meet them where they are, not yet another static form.

Specific brings all this together, offering a best-in-class experience for building and sharing conversational surveys that both you and your audience actually enjoy. If you’re new to building surveys this way, see our step-by-step guide to creating a graduate student survey about department communication and jump in with our AI survey generator—it only takes a minute to start.

See this department communication survey example now

Ready to uncover actionable insights? See how a conversational AI survey for department communication makes feedback collection engaging, detailed, and genuinely useful—while saving you hours of setup and analysis. Create your own survey and start seeing richer responses from college graduate students today.