Here are some of the best questions for a middle school student survey about school lunch and nutrition, along with practical tips for designing them. You can instantly build a smart, conversational survey with Specific in seconds.
The best open-ended questions for a middle school student survey about school lunch and nutrition
If you want real, meaningful feedback from students, open-ended questions are your best friend. They let students explain their thoughts and experiences in their own words, which means you get stories, details, and actionable ideas—not just numbers. This is especially important when you want to uncover why students might feel a certain way about their lunches, or when you’re looking for suggestions you haven’t thought of yourself.
Open-ended questions work well as standalones or as follow-ups after a multiple-choice answer. They’re perfect when you want richer context or insight.
Here are ten of the best open-ended survey questions you can use:
What do you usually like or dislike about the school lunch menu?
If you could change one thing about the food served at lunch, what would it be and why?
Can you describe what makes a lunch healthy or unhealthy in your opinion?
Tell us about your favorite lunch day at school. What made it so good?
Which foods would you like to see more often in the cafeteria?
Have you ever skipped lunch at school? If so, what were the reasons?
How do you feel after eating lunch at school most days?
What snacks do you usually bring or buy for lunch, and why?
If you could give advice to the school lunch planners, what would you say?
What else would you like to share about your experience with school lunch and nutrition?
If you want deeper stories, these types of questions help uncover real insights. For example, a 2015 study found that while 77% of middle school students ate school lunch because they were hungry, many also wanted a better taste, smell, and appearance of the food—things that you only really discover from open-ended responses. [1]
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for a middle school school lunch and nutrition survey
When do single-select multiple-choice questions shine? Use them when you want to quickly quantify what students think, or to get quick preferences that you can track over time. Sometimes students respond better when they see familiar options, especially if the choices feel relevant to their daily lives. These questions are also a great way to kick off a survey and build trust before you add deeper open-ended questions or follow-ups.
Question: How often do you eat the school-provided lunch?
Every day
A few times a week
Rarely
Never
Question: What is your main reason for eating lunch at school?
I’m hungry
It’s healthy
I can sit with friends
Other
Question: How would you rate the taste of the school lunch?
Excellent
Good
Okay
Poor
When to follow up with "why?" Use a follow-up "why" when a student gives an answer that could mean several things: for example, if someone says they eat lunch at school "because it's healthy," you can follow up with, "What makes it feel healthy to you?" This uncovers real motivators and preferences. Sometimes single-choice questions help you spot a trend, but a "why?" gives the color and detail you need to actually act on what you’re learning.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? Always consider adding "Other"—kids often have unique reasons or experiences that standard options won’t capture. When "Other" is selected, follow up with an open-ended question. This lets students share unexpected feedback without feeling forced into a box and helps you spot new issues or emerging themes you might otherwise miss. Automated follow-up questions can then dig deeper into these unique responses, unlocking fresh perspectives.
Should you use an NPS question for middle school lunch and nutrition surveys?
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a classic for customer satisfaction, but it also works well for student perception—especially when the goal is to measure overall satisfaction and gather actionable feedback. For middle school lunch surveys, try asking, “On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend the school lunch program to a friend?” Follow this with “Why did you give that score?” and you get a clear metric plus rich, constructive feedback.
If you’d like an instant NPS-syle survey ready to go, here’s a quick way to generate a survey tailored for student lunch and nutrition with Specific.
NPS helps you benchmark sentiment over time and spot major issues right away. In the world of education, this approach fits with how 60% of teachers already use AI tools to streamline lesson planning and feedback collection. [6]
The power of follow-up questions
Follow-up questions are what make conversational surveys so effective, especially when you’re dealing with middle school students who often answer briefly the first time. With Specific, automated follow-ups ask intelligent, on-the-spot questions based on a student’s previous answer. This feels like a real conversation, where the survey digs deeper just like a smart human interviewer—saving you from having to manually email students for extra details and helping you get richer, more useful insights.
Student: "The lunch is okay."
AI follow-up: "What do you think would make the lunch better?"
If you stop at the first answer, you’ll only hear “okay” over and over. With a quick, targeted follow-up, you learn about specific dishes, issues, or even social aspects (like wanting more time to eat with friends).
How many followups to ask? In most cases, two or three follow-ups are enough to gather depth without making students feel tired. And if you’ve already collected the info you want, you can set the survey to gently skip to the next question. Specific gives you the flexibility to tweak this so it always feels natural.
This makes it a conversational survey, turning a static form into a genuine back-and-forth that students actually engage with. It feels less like homework and more like someone is really listening.
AI survey analysis is a breeze with modern tools—even when you’ve gathered a pile of open-ended, unstructured responses, you can analyze survey answers using AI and spot patterns in minutes, not weeks.
These automated follow-ups are a game-changer—if you haven’t tried them, generate your own survey and see how much deeper you can go with very little effort.
How to write a prompt for ChatGPT or an AI survey builder
If you’re using ChatGPT or a tool like Specific’s AI survey generator, prompts are everything. Here’s how you can nudge AI to come up with genuinely useful questions for your lunch and nutrition survey.
Start with a basic prompt like:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for middle school student survey about school lunch and nutrition.
But for best results, always give extra context. AI does more for you when it knows your goals, audience, and situation. For example:
I’m organizing a survey to find out how satisfied middle school students are with our school lunch program. We want to learn what they like, what could be healthier, and how we can make lunch more enjoyable for everyone. Suggest 10 detailed, age-appropriate questions.
Once you have a set of questions, classify them by topic:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Then, zero in on the topics that matter most. Suppose you see categories like “Health,” “Taste,” and “Social experience”—you could drill down with:
Generate 10 questions for the categories Health and Social experience in our middle school student lunch survey.
This focused prompt approach gives you better coverage and helps you iterate quickly until you have the perfect survey.
What is a conversational survey?
A conversational survey feels like a chat, not a form. Instead of firing off all questions at once, it adapts to answers in real-time—digging deeper, clarifying points, and responding intelligently. This approach leads to more honest, complete responses and a much higher engagement rate, especially with kids already used to chatting online.
Manual Survey Creation | AI-Generated (Conversational) Survey |
|---|---|
Build every question from scratch | Describe your goal, and AI generates expert questions for you |
Static order; no follow-ups | Dynamic conversations—AI asks relevant follow-ups |
Takes hours, sometimes days | Ready in seconds |
Hard to analyze open responses | AI groups insights for you automatically |
Why use AI for middle school student surveys? The numbers say it all: 86% of students use AI tools in their studies, and over half use them at least weekly. [4] Middle schoolers are comfortable with chat interfaces and expect instant, responsive experiences. Using an AI survey builder makes the process not just easier for you, but far more engaging for them.
If you’re creating your first AI survey, check out this how-to guide for building a middle school lunch and nutrition survey—it walks you through every step and helps you get started with Specific.
Specific is designed to make conversational surveys not only easy to build, but a pleasure for students to answer. From smart follow-ups to AI-powered insights, it delivers a frictionless experience for both survey creators and your audience.
See this school lunch and nutrition survey example now
Try generating and customizing your own survey to see how fast and insightful your school lunch feedback collection can be—with instant AI-powered follow-ups and simple, natural conversations that help you get real answers right away.