Best questions for elementary school student survey about feeling safe at school

Here are some of the best questions for an elementary school student survey about feeling safe at school, plus tips on how to create them. If you want to generate a survey like this in seconds, you can build it with Specific—it’s fast, smart, and adapts to your audience.

Best open-ended questions for elementary school student survey about feeling safe at school

Open-ended questions work wonders for uncovering honest stories, unfiltered emotions, and the “why” behind each answer. They're ideal for learning how students actually feel, without pushing them toward your assumptions. By letting students respond in their own words, you discover the context and nuance that often goes missing in rigid forms—especially when the topic is as sensitive as safety.

Given that U.S. schools reported a record 188 shootings with casualties in the 2021-22 school year—a number that more than doubled from the previous year—understanding how students feel in their environment has never been more important.[1]

1. What makes you feel safe when you’re at school?

2. Have you ever felt unsafe at school? Can you tell us what happened?

3. Who do you feel you can talk to when something at school worries you?

4. If you feel unsafe, what do you usually do?

5. Are there any places at school where you feel less safe? Why?

6. What could teachers or staff do to help you feel safer?

7. Have you seen or experienced bullying? How did it make you feel?

8. How do your friends help you feel safe at school?

9. If something makes you uncomfortable at school, who would you tell?

10. What’s one change that could make our school a safer place for everyone?

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for elementary school student survey about feeling safe at school

Single-select multiple-choice questions are best when you need to quantify trends or lower the “activation energy” for students to respond. Sometimes it’s easier for a student to choose from clear, short options. These questions can quickly highlight patterns and make a great starting point for deeper, open-ended follow-ups.

Question: How safe do you feel at school?

• Very safe

• Mostly safe

• Sometimes safe

• Rarely safe

• Never safe

Question: Who do you trust the most to help you if you feel unsafe?

• Teacher

• School counselor

• Principal

• Friend

• Other

Question: Where at school do you feel the least safe?

• Hallway

• Cafeteria

• Playground

• Restroom

• Classroom

• I feel safe everywhere

When to followup with "why?" If a student selects an answer like “Rarely safe,” always ask “Can you tell us why you feel this way?” Follow-ups encourage the student to share more specific details—crucial for understanding and fixing the root cause.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? If you’re unsure whether you’ve captured every possible answer (“Who do you trust most?” for example), include “Other.” Followup questions can then discover unique perspectives you hadn’t considered, revealing hidden trends or edge cases that regular choices miss.

Using NPS-style questions for student safety surveys

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey style isn’t just for businesses—it’s a simple, quantifiable way to measure a student’s likelihood to recommend their school as a safe place. The NPS format asks: “On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to tell a friend that our school is a safe place?” By tracking shifts in this single number over time or between student groups, schools can identify issues quickly and target interventions where most needed.

If you want to see a ready-made NPS survey tailored for elementary students about feeling safe, try this AI survey generator for NPS safety surveys.

The power of follow-up questions

Asking smart follow-up questions is where conversational surveys like those from Specific really shine. Instead of leaving you with cryptic, incomplete answers, AI-powered surveys automatically probe deeper right when it matters. This feature saves you from tedious back-and-forth emails and makes your feedback richer and more actionable. You can read more about automatic AI follow-up questions here.

These follow-ups work in real time—like having an expert interviewer clarify every response, so nothing falls through the cracks. Automated follow-ups not only make the experience feel like a real conversation, but also lead to higher quality data for you.

• Student: "I sometimes feel scared in the hallway."

• AI follow-up: "Can you share more about what makes you feel scared in the hallway?"

Without the second question, you’d have little context to act on—was it bullying, crowded spaces, or something else?

How many followups to ask? Two or three follow-ups are usually enough to get to the heart of a student’s experience, while giving them an option to move on once they’ve said all they’re comfortable sharing. With Specific, you can customize this setting in every survey.

This makes it a conversational survey—and students find it less intimidating than long, impersonal forms.

Easy to analyze responses using AI. Even if you collect a lot of detailed, open-text responses, AI survey response analysis makes it easy to summarize, theme, and interpret the results instantly. See how to analyze responses with AI from these surveys.

Automated follow-up questions are a completely new concept—go ahead and generate your own survey to experience how much deeper your insights can be.

How to prompt ChatGPT or AI to generate great survey questions

You can create surveys by asking AI directly. Here’s how I would do it, step by step:

Start by requesting a simple list:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for elementary school student survey about feeling safe at school.

The trick with AI, though, is you’ll always get better results when you provide more context. For example, specify who you are, the school environment, or your survey’s goal:

I am a school counselor trying to measure how safe elementary students feel in different areas of the school, focusing both on physical and emotional safety. Suggest 10 open-ended questions for our survey, highlighting places or situations that make students feel safe or uncomfortable, and asking who they would trust for help.

Once you have a list, refine it for relevance by asking:

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

Then, for the categories you care most about (say, "Physical locations" or "Trusted adults"), deepen your survey with:

Generate 10 questions for categories “Physical locations” and “Trusted adults.”

What is a conversational survey?

A conversational survey mimics natural, friendly chats—each answer unlocks the next question, with AI probing for clarity or extra context where needed. This is unlike traditional, static forms that can feel cold, overwhelming, or exhausting (for kids especially).

Here’s how AI survey generation stacks up against traditional survey creation:

Why use AI for elementary school student surveys? AI can process responses up to 60% faster than manual methods, and it’s uniquely skilled at understanding open-ended, conversational feedback thanks to natural language processing.[3][4] For educators, school leaders, or counselors tasked with monitoring students’ sense of safety, that means immediate, actionable insights you can trust.

Want to learn more about the process? Check out our detailed breakdown on how to create an elementary school safety survey.

With Specific, you get best-in-class user experience—making both survey creation and response smooth and engaging for everyone involved, whether you’re an admin or a student.

See this feeling safe at school survey example now

See real results by creating a conversational survey that uncovers what truly makes students feel safe. Experience a smarter, faster way to gather and act on feedback—and unlock authentic, actionable insights today.