Google Form School Climate Survey

Have you ever administered a school-wide climate survey? This is beyond the counseling needs assessment and asks about the general climate of the school. In my first district, the county administered a survey to 4th graders biannually. It was a good way to see patterns of student attitudes towards school and was a useful tool for our leadership team. In my last district, we didn't have a tool administered by the district and the leadership team asked me to work on creating a school climate survey. I've included all the steps here so warning- this post is long!

Creating Survey Questions

To create the survey questions, I found several resources online and pulled questions that were relevant to my school. Some resources: WINSS, Colorado Safe Communities,  and Austin School Climate Survey (via Casel). I presented a list of questions to my leadership team and we made edits as needed. We planned to give the survey to all students 2nd-5th grade during their computer lab specials time. I would go into the computer lab for 2nd and 3rd grades to help the teacher administer the survey. The survey took about 15 minutes to administer to the whole class.

To make the survey kid-friendly we chose to go with multiple choice responses (after demographics). Our choices were: Yes!!!, Yes, No, No!!!! When introducing the survey, I explained the choices using the example of broccoli- some people love broccoli (yes!!!), some people think it's fine (yes), some people don't like it (no), and some hate it (no!!!). The kids really seemed to get the example and didn't have any trouble with the multiple choice options.

We did find that many kids did not know their demographic data, especially race. If they didn't know, I told them to choose "I don't know" and explained that you can't tell by looking at someone what their race or ethnicity is. 

Using Google Forms

Google forms is a fast and easy way to create a survey. Many free programs available have a limit to the number of responses you collect. With 400 2nd-5th graders, this wasn't an option for us. To create a form, go to google drive and click New and choose Google Forms under the More section. 

In the next screen, you'll be able to write a title and add your questions. It's very easy and user-friendly. You also have the option to change the theme. They  have many fun themes to make the survey inviting and friendly. To check how your survey looks, you can click "view live form."

When completed, you can click "Send Form" in the right hand corner and you will be given a link to use. I like to shorten the URL to make it easier to share. At my school, we put the link on the homepage of our school website. My computer teacher actually made a non-related picture a hyperlink so that students wouldn't randomly take the survey outside of our class. I wanted to make sure that kids were taking the survey multiple times. This worked really well for us. 

Collecting Data

One great thing about Google Forms is that it collects and calculates all the data for you! To find the data click "view responses," and you will be taken to a spreadsheet. This is great for sorting and looking for specific subgroups (gender, race, grade). What makes google forms awesome is the ability to summarize responses with one click. 

To see a beautiful summary that's easy to share with your staff, click Form then "Show summary of responses." This is what you'll see:

If you're interested in seeing a PDF of my school climate survey, I have included that below. (If you are on mobile, click here.)

How do you survey students in your building? What data do you use to make sure that students feel like school is a positive place to be?

This post was originally shared in April 2015 and updated November 2017.