Here are some of the best questions for a High School Sophomore Student survey about assessment fairness, along with practical tips for designing your own. If you’d like an instant way to generate such a survey, Specific can help you build it in seconds with powerful AI tools tailored for education research.
Open-ended questions that reveal student perspectives
Open-ended questions are your best bet when you want authentic, detailed feedback. They let students convey their experiences, ideas, and challenges without boxing their answers into predefined choices. Use these when you want deep qualitative insights and are curious about what your students truly think.
Can you describe a recent assessment (test, project, or quiz) that you felt was fair? What made it fair for you?
Have you ever felt an assessment was unfair? What happened, and why did it feel that way?
What makes an assessment clear and easy to understand for you?
Are there any types of assessments (oral, written, group projects, etc.) that you find more challenging to do well on? Why?
How do you feel about the amount of time given for different assessments?
If you could change something about how assessments are done at your school, what would it be?
How well do you think assessments match what you learn in class?
In what ways do teachers explain how your work will be graded?
What helps you feel confident before taking an assessment?
Can you share an example where you didn’t get to show your knowledge because of how the assessment was designed?
Open-ended responses help uncover nuanced perspectives on fairness—something recent studies show really matters to students, especially regarding oral exams and transparency.[3]
The best single-select multiple-choice questions
Single-select multiple-choice questions are great for when you want to quantify opinions or identify patterns fast. They offer a structured snapshot and are easier for respondents to answer, often “opening the door” to a more in-depth conversation via follow-up questions. Use these early in a survey to spot common trends, or when you want a quick pulse on a specific aspect of assessment fairness.
Question: Overall, how fair do you think assessments at your school are?
Very fair
Mostly fair
Not very fair
Not at all fair
Question: Which assessment type feels the fairest to you?
Written tests
Oral exams
Projects
Group work
Other
Question: Do you feel you have enough time to complete most assessments?
Always
Sometimes
Rarely
Never
When to follow up with "why?" If a student answers "Not very fair" or "Never" to any of the above, always ask “Why?” in a conversational context. It helps you dig deeper into their experience, offering rich context: “Could you tell us more about what felt unfair and how it could be improved?”
When and why to add the "Other" choice? Including “Other” as an option allows respondents to share viewpoints or assessment types you might not have listed. It’s especially useful when new or uncommon formats are in use, and the resulting open-ended answers can surface unexpected insights worth following up.
The NPS question for students: Does it make sense?
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is typically used to measure loyalty or satisfaction, and it translates surprisingly well for education contexts, especially about assessment fairness. It’s simple, intuitive, and powerful for benchmarking:
“On a scale from 0-10, how likely are you to recommend your school’s assessment practices to a friend at another school?”
Pair this with a conversational follow-up like, “What’s the main reason for your score?” This uncovers both broad sentiment and specific reasons, helping you validate fairness perceptions year-over-year. Try the AI survey builder to create an NPS survey for students.
Given that 72% of schools globally already use AI tools for grading, and these systems have driven a 37% decrease in grading time for educators, it's clear that rapidly getting actionable, honest feedback through NPS-style surveys is both practical and impactful. [1]
The power of follow-up questions
Traditional survey forms often stop at a single answer, but the real magic happens when you ask smart follow-ups. Specific’s AI-powered follow-up questions work in real time to clarify, probe, or expand on each response—just like an expert interviewer would, but at scale. This enriches your insights and saves huge amounts of time compared to manual follow-ups by email or separate interviews.
High school sophomore student: "Some tests feel unfair."
AI follow-up: "Which tests did you feel were unfair, and what made them seem that way to you?"
How many followups to ask? Usually, 2–3 well-crafted follow-ups are enough. With Specific, you can set the follow-up “depth” so it naturally stops once you’ve gathered what you need, or allow students to skip if they feel they’ve shared enough.
This makes it a conversational survey: Students feel like they’re having a real conversation, which increases engagement and leads to more honest, complete answers.
AI survey analysis, insights, and themes: When you have lots of open-ended responses, Specific makes it easy to analyze using AI. It quickly summarizes, categorizes, and distills key themes—even from unstructured text—allowing you to turn detailed input into actionable insights.
These automated follow-up questions are a new concept for many. Try creating a survey with Specific’s AI and experience the difference in depth and speed yourself.
Prompting ChatGPT for great survey questions
Want to use your own AI tools to craft questions? Here’s a simple starting point. Try this basic prompt:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for High School Sophomore Student survey about assessment fairness.
But for best results, always add more context. The richer your prompt, the better the questions:
I’d like to design a survey for high school sophomores to explore how fair they find different types of assessments (tests, projects, oral exams). The goal is to understand where they feel current practices are working or falling short, and how fairness could be improved. Suggest 10 open-ended questions suitable for this audience.
You can then go deeper by asking:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Once you see which topics are key, choose the most relevant ones and ask:
Generate 10 questions for categories like fairness of oral exams, time limits for assessments, and teacher transparency about grading.
Keep prompting until you feel you’ve captured the nuances that matter to your students.
What is a conversational survey, and why does it matter?
A conversational survey is interactive—rather than giving respondents a static list of questions, you have a chat-like experience where each answer can trigger a smart, relevant follow-up, just like a real conversation. This makes data collection more engaging, often resulting in richer, more actionable results compared to static survey forms.
Here’s how conversational surveys created with an AI survey generator like Specific stack up against traditional/manual surveys:
Manual Surveys | AI-Generated Conversational Surveys |
|---|---|
Require manual drafting and tweaking for each question. | AI drafts questions and adapts them to your context instantly. |
Follow-ups need human intervention (emails or additional interviews). | AI probes deeper in real time based on answers given. |
Static, less engaging experience—risk of boredom or incomplete data. | Conversational, dynamic, and engaging—higher completion and honesty. |
Manual data analysis. | AI summarizes, extracts themes, and helps you chat about the results. |
Why use AI for high school sophomore student surveys? AI-powered survey tools simplify the hard parts of survey creation and response analysis—you can prompt AI to create, adapt, and analyze questions, and the system will handle smart follow-ups automatically. This is especially impactful in education, where teachers and researchers are stretched for time and want accurate, unbiased results. According to recent research, AI assessment tools can cut grading time by up to 75% and lead to more consistent and objective evaluations, which directly supports the goal of fairer student assessment.[2]
Specific is the authority in conversational surveys, offering best-in-class user experience so feedback is easy and deep insights are just a conversation away. If you want step-by-step advice, use our guide to creating high school sophomore student surveys about assessment fairness to get started.
See this assessment fairness survey example now
See for yourself how easy it is to create an engaging, conversational survey about assessment fairness for high school sophomores—complete with AI-powered follow-ups that reveal actionable insights in real time. Start now and transform the way you collect and understand student perspectives!