This article will guide you on how to create a high school freshman student survey about peer relationships. Specific can help you generate an effective survey in seconds—just build a survey with Specific and start gathering insights right away.
Steps to create a survey for high school freshman students about peer relationships
If you want to save time, just generate a survey with Specific—it’s seriously that quick. You’re two steps away from a conversation-ready survey:
Tell what survey you want.
Done.
You honestly don’t even need to read further. The AI does all the expert design work: it creates the entire peer relationships survey, drawing on best practices and existing research, and it’s smart enough to ask your respondents follow-up questions to collect deep, meaningful feedback with context.
Why student surveys on peer relationships matter
There’s a lot riding on peer relationships in the first year of high school. If you’re not collecting feedback from freshmen on this, you’re missing out on understanding their real social challenges and successes. Solid data on these connections can make or break programs aimed at supporting students’ well-being.
59.2% of high school students reported satisfaction with their peer relationships, and 80.2% are satisfied with friendships. But that still leaves many teens struggling to connect, and without insights, those gaps stay hidden. [1]
Positive peer relationships during adolescence are linked to better mental health outcomes, including lower stress and more self-esteem. If you don’t know where your freshmen stand, you can’t support them proactively. [2]
Supportive peer relationships drive academic achievement; peer support predicts higher grades and better engagement. Schools that don’t surface this info are missing direct chances to improve outcomes for every ninth grader. [4]
Simply put: the importance of high school freshman student feedback about peer relationships can’t be overstated. When you understand their social experience, you spot issues early, make better policy, and help every student feel like they truly belong.
What makes a good survey about peer relationships?
Great surveys get honest, clear responses and lots of them. Here’s what separates the good from the rest when designing a high school freshman student survey about peer relationships:
Clear, unbiased questions: Avoid leading or confusing language. Ask questions that let students answer in their own words or pick from genuinely neutral choices.
Conversational tone: Speak like a supportive peer or teacher, not a robot. Students are much more likely to give thoughtful responses when the survey feels personal, not clinical.
Expert structure: Start broad, but allow space for deeper dives through follow-up questions. AI can handle this automatically and smartly.
Bad Practices | Good Practices |
|---|---|
Loaded questions (“You get along with everyone, right?”) | Open, non-judgmental wording (“How do you feel about your current friendships?”) |
Dry, formal tone | Friendly, inviting language—like having a chat |
Too many required fields | Mix of mandatory and optional, plus followups only when it helps |
The real test? High quantity and high quality of responses. The better your questions and experience, the more honest data you’ll get.
Question types and examples for a high school freshman student survey on peer relationships
Surveys about peer relationships should mix open-ended questions, single-select multiple-choice items, and NPS (Net Promoter Score) questions to get a well-rounded picture. Want inspiration and expert commentary? Don’t miss our article with the best questions for high school freshman student surveys about peer relationships.
Open-ended questions are perfect for gathering authentic student stories and context. Use these to invite longer reflections or uncover “why” behind behaviors. Examples:
Can you describe a time when a classmate made you feel included or supported?
What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced in making friends at high school so far?
Single-select multiple-choice questions help quantify trends and support quick analysis. They’re great for when you want quick stats, or when the question only has a few reasonable answers.
How often do you spend time with classmates outside of class?
Almost daily
A few times a week
Rarely
Almost never
NPS (Net Promoter Score) question offers an easy, standardized way to measure overall satisfaction or likelihood to recommend. Try an NPS survey prompt for this audience and topic.
On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend your current peer group to a new student looking for supportive friendships at this school?
Followup questions to uncover "the why": Open-ended followups are key for surfacing motives, context, or clarifying unclear responses. For example, if a student chooses “rarely” on a question about socializing, you can simply ask:
What are the main reasons you don’t often spend time with classmates outside of school?
Is there anything the school could do to help you feel more connected?
For more tips, examples, and question frameworks, see our in-depth guide to writing questions for peer relationships surveys.
What is a conversational survey?
Conversational surveys reimagine feedback as a real chat—one that’s natural, adaptive, and genuinely engaging. Instead of static forms, students interact with an AI agent that understands context, adapts tone, and offers timely follow-up questions.
With traditional surveys, you:
Draft questions manually (slow and repetitive)
Get static, often superficial answers
Spend hours analyzing unstructured feedback
With AI survey generation—especially using Specific—you get a smarter process:
Survey creation is instant (see the AI survey builder)
Questions and tone are tailored to your audience
AI followups gather deeper insights, while keeping things friendly
Response analysis is built in and interactive
Manual surveys | AI-generated surveys |
|---|---|
Static list of questions | Adaptive Q&A with contextual followups |
One-size-fits-all tone | Custom conversational voice |
Slow to create and analyze | Built in seconds, with instant analysis |
Why use AI for high school freshman student surveys? When you use AI, you can include expert knowledge and best practices every single time. Specific makes the feedback process smoother for both students and staff and lets you launch a complete, conversational survey with ease—no bias, no gaps, just actionable insights. For a breakdown of how to make a survey step by step, check out this how-to article.
The “AI survey example” approach delivers a best-in-class user experience, unlocking honest, rich info about peer relationships from every freshman voice.
The power of follow-up questions
If you skip follow-up questions in your high school freshman student survey, you settle for generic, half-complete answers. That’s why automated followup questions are a game-changer—Specific’s AI probes gently in real time, like a great interviewer, uncovering exactly what you need to know.
Student: “I sometimes eat lunch alone.”
AI follow-up: “Can you share what makes you choose to eat alone—are there factors at school or with peers that influence this?”
With no followup, you’re left guessing; with smart AI, you get the emotional context that matters for well-being and school policy.
How many followups to ask? Usually, 2-3 is enough. Specific lets you control this—when you get the insight you need, the survey moves on so students don’t feel stuck or overloaded.
This makes it a conversational survey: The chat-like experience (never robotic or repetitive) makes students more likely to open up—it’s not just a survey, it’s a real conversation, powered by AI probing for depth.
AI survey response analysis: Don’t let the volume of open ends overwhelm you. With Specific, AI makes it easy to analyze responses from high school freshman student surveys, summarizing patterns and surfacing key themes in minutes.
Try generating a survey and see for yourself how much richer (and actionable) your data becomes with dynamic followup questions.
See this peer relationships survey example now
Create your own survey and instantly start meaningful conversations with freshmen. Gather deep insights, encourage honest answers, and act with confidence—don’t settle for one-dimensional data when you can run a conversational survey that gets real results.