Here are some of the best questions for a High School Freshman Student survey about school safety, along with practical tips for creating them. We can help you generate a tailored and impactful survey for your needs on Specific in just a few clicks.
The best open-ended questions for a school safety survey
If you want real insight into how students feel, open-ended questions are a must. These questions encourage students to share personal stories and surface concerns that you may never have considered otherwise. Given the increase in bullying and violence at schools—like how 40% of kids reported being bullied at school campuses in 2023, which is a sharp jump from previous years [1]—it’s important to let students talk freely about their experiences and emotions.
What does “feeling safe” at school mean to you as a freshman?
Can you share any moments when you felt especially unsafe or uncomfortable at school?
What’s one thing that you wish teachers or staff understood about student safety?
What types of behavior from others (students or adults) make you feel threatened or anxious while at school?
Have you ever seen or experienced bullying, and how did it affect you or those around you?
Can you describe any areas at school where you don’t feel safe (e.g., hallways, bathrooms, outside areas)?
How do social media or online activity impact your feeling of safety at school?
What changes would you suggest to improve school safety for everyone?
Have there been moments when you considered missing school because you felt unsafe? What happened?
Do you feel comfortable talking to adults at school about safety concerns? Why or why not?
Effective single-select multiple-choice questions
When you need to quantify answers, or want an easy way to open the conversation, single-select multiple-choice questions are the way to go. They help you quickly spot trends in opinions and experiences. Oftentimes, these are great for surfacing issues or setting the stage for follow-up questions, especially if a respondent might otherwise feel unsure how to start their response.
Question: How safe do you generally feel at school?
Very safe
Somewhat safe
Not very safe
Not at all safe
Question: Which area at school do you feel least safe in?
Hallways
Bathrooms
Classrooms
Outdoor areas
Other
Question: Have you ever missed school because you felt unsafe?
Yes, once
Yes, more than once
No
When to followup with "why?" If a student selects “Not at all safe,” asking “Can you tell us why?” might prompt them to share specifics, which brings critical details to the surface. This approach is even more timely given that about 9% of high schoolers stay home at least once a month due to safety worries [3]. Getting students to share their ‘why’ helps address the real, nuanced issues behind those numbers.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? Always give the “Other” option when asking about places, causes, or groups. This lets students add perspectives you may not have thought about—and often, their open answers highlight risks or needs that had slipped through the cracks. Follow-up questions after “Other” can uncover these unexpected insights.
The value of an NPS-style question on school safety
Net Promoter Score (NPS) isn’t just for products and businesses—it’s a powerful way to measure overall student confidence in school safety, too. Ask: “On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend your school to a friend based on how safe you feel here?” This gives you a simple metric you can track year over year, and if you pair it with a follow-up (“What’s the main reason for your score?”), you get both a number and actionable insights.
NPS is especially useful for school safety because it quickly surfaces passive discontent and strong negative or positive experiences that detailed questions alone might miss. Try building an NPS safety survey instantly and see how it changes your understanding of the freshman perspective.
The power of follow-up questions
The difference between a good survey and a truly valuable one often comes down to follow-up questions. You can read more on automated followup questions and how they work. With conversational AI, you can automatically ask smart, context-aware follow-ups based on the student’s previous reply—just like a skilled interviewer who doesn’t let half-answers slip by. For safety, this is crucial: it’s not enough to know a student “sometimes feels unsafe,” you have to dig deeper to understand when, where, and why.
Student: “I don’t like walking through the back hallway.”
AI follow-up: “What is it about the back hallway that makes you uncomfortable?”
How many followups to ask? Usually, 2-3 followups are plenty—just enough to dig up specifics without overwhelming students. And it’s helpful to let students skip to the next main question once you have what you need. With Specific, you can fine-tune this in your survey settings.
This makes it a conversational survey: You’re not just collecting answers; you’re holding a dialogue. That’s what makes an AI survey genuinely conversational and much more effective for uncovering the real story behind every response.
AI survey analysis, even for qualitative data: Worried that all this text will be impossible to manage? Don’t be. AI-powered response analysis makes it easy to quickly extract themes and highlights, no matter how many open-ended replies you collect.
These smart, automated followup questions are a relatively new concept—try to generate a survey and experience the difference for yourself.
How to write a better prompt for AI-generated survey questions
If you want great questions from GPT (like ChatGPT), clarity and context matter. Start with a basic prompt:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for High School Freshman Student survey about School Safety.
But if you give the AI more details about your goal, you’ll get far better results. Try adding context about your school, student background, or the specific issues you care about:
I’m a school counselor at a large urban high school. Suggest 10 open-ended questions for high school freshmen that address feelings about physical safety, bullying, and support from school staff.
After you have some draft questions, organize them:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Once you see the categories, you can easily ask the AI to help expand on what’s most critical to you:
Generate 10 questions focused on “bullying and peer interactions” and “safety in public areas.”
Iterating like this leads to sharper, more relevant survey questions and makes your process a million times easier—especially when you use a conversational survey builder like Specific’s AI-survey generator.
What is a conversational survey (and why use AI survey tools)?
A conversational survey uses AI to create a natural, chat-like experience. It’s not a static form—it reacts, adapts, and feels almost like interviewing each respondent personally. This is a huge leap from traditional survey forms, especially when feedback quality and student engagement matter as much as the data itself.
Manual Surveys | AI-Generated (Conversational) Surveys |
|---|---|
Forms are static and unchanging, prone to missed context | Dynamic, adapts to each reply in real time for richer insights |
Usually results in lower completion rates and shallow responses | Higher response rates, deeper context, more genuine engagement |
Analysis takes hours—or days—for qualitative answers | Instant AI summaries and insight extraction |
Why use AI for high school freshman student surveys? Freshmen may be new, nervous, or unsure how to speak up. Conversational AI lowers the barrier and adapts to each student’s communication style. That’s why an AI survey example with smart follow-ups and real-time adaptation captures much more of the real picture—whether you’re looking for best survey questions, need an AI survey builder, or want a fully conversational survey experience.
Specific offers a best-in-class user experience that makes conversational surveys smooth and engaging for both survey creators and students. Want to get started? Check out our guide on creating a survey to see how easy it is.
See a school safety survey example now
Want more candid, actionable feedback from your students? Try creating a school safety survey today—it’s fast, conversational, packed with unique insights, and designed for measurable impact.