A student attitude questionnaire for classrooms and research projects
A student attitude survey asks how students feel about school, what they believe about it and what they actually do there. Twelve core questions cover all three parts in roughly five minutes, and each one tells you something specific when the results come in.
- 32questions
- 12in the core
- 3parts: feel, think, do
- Grade 6to college
By Michael Hodge, BSc Psychology Updated September 2026
All 32 student attitude questions
Every attitude question below shows its answer scale or options, with a short line explaining what a high or low answer signals. Ticks already sit beside the core twelve. Switch on whichever extra set suits your school, and the finished list goes online, onto paper, or into your usual survey tool.
The core 1212 questions
One overall feeling about school, eight statements split across feelings, beliefs and habits, a question on speaking up, and two open questions. It works for a class, a year group or a whole school.
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How do you feel about school at the moment?
I like it a lotI like it a bitI don't like it very muchI don't like it at allThe headline attitude in one question. The four answers match the HBSC school survey, so you can set your share next to national figures.1
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I enjoy most of my lessons.
Strongly disagree12345Strongly agree1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agreeFeel: how the lessons themselves land, apart from friends and the building.
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I can keep up with my schoolwork without feeling stressed.
Strongly disagree12345Strongly agree1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agreeFeel: pressure. Rising workload stress often explains a falling liking for school.1
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What I learn at school will help me later in life.
Strongly disagree12345Strongly agree1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agreeThink: whether school seems worth it. Students who see no use for it rarely stay keen.
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If I put in the effort, I can do well at school.
Strongly disagree12345Strongly agree1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agreeThink: belief that effort pays off. A low score points to students who have written themselves off.
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School rules here are applied fairly to everyone.
Strongly disagree12345Strongly agree1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agreeThink: attitude to rules and discipline, which shapes behaviour more than the rules themselves.
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My teachers want every student to do well.
Strongly disagree12345Strongly agree1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agreeThink: how students see adults at school. Read it next to the rules question.
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I hand in my work on time.
Strongly disagree12345Strongly agree1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agreeDo: the most visible habit that follows from a good or poor attitude.
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When schoolwork gets hard, I keep going instead of giving up.
Strongly disagree12345Strongly agree1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agreeDo: persistence. Students can like school and still stop at the first hard problem.
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How often do you speak up in class, for example to ask or answer a question?
NeverRarelySometimesOftenAlwaysDo: taking part, counted rather than rated. Read the spread, not the average.
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What is the best thing about school for you right now?
Open answerNames what to protect. Students often mention one teacher, one club or one friend group.
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If you could change one thing about school, what would it be?
Open answerOne change per student. Sort the answers into piles; the biggest pile is your starting point.
Attitude to one subject7 questions
Write the subject at the top of the page (math, science, reading, a language). The statements then read as "this subject". The first two questions work without it.
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Which subject do you like most?
English or readingMathScienceHistory or social studiesA languageArt, music or dramaPESomething elseShows where positive attitudes already sit, so you can learn from those lessons.
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Which subject do you like least?
English or readingMathScienceHistory or social studiesA languageArt, music or dramaPESomething elsePairs with the previous question. A subject that tops both lists splits the class.
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I look forward to lessons in this subject.
Strongly disagree12345Strongly agree1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agreeFeel: the subject from the student side of the desk.
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This subject will matter for the things I want to do later.
Strongly disagree12345Strongly agree1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agreeThink: value. Low value with high enjoyment means students like it but see no future in it.
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This subject comes easily to me.
Strongly disagree12345Strongly agree1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agreeThink: self-belief in this one subject, which can differ a lot from school overall.
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I get nervous before tests in this subject.
Strongly disagree12345Strongly agree1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agreeWorded the other way round: agreeing is the negative answer. Reverse it before adding it to a score.
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I do more in this subject than the homework asks.
Strongly disagree12345Strongly agree1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agreeDo: effort nobody requires, the clearest sign of a positive subject attitude.
Classmates and behaviour in class5 questions
The behaviour side of attitude: how students treat each other and how lessons run. Add it when the rules or speaking-up answers come back low.
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I get along with most of my classmates.
Strongly disagree12345Strongly agree1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agreePeer attitude. Students who dread the people in the room rarely warm to the lesson.
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How often do lessons get interrupted by students messing around?
NeverIn a few lessonsIn about halfIn most lessonsIn every lessonA count of disruption, which students report more frankly than teachers expect.
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I behave the same way whether or not a teacher is watching.
Strongly disagree12345Strongly agree1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agreeShows whether good behaviour comes from the student or only from supervision.
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I would speak up if a classmate was being treated badly.
Strongly disagree12345Strongly agree1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agreeAttitude to others in action. Low scores are a cue for work on standing up for peers.
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What one change would make your lessons calmer?
Open answerStudents often name small fixes: seating, start-of-lesson routines, phones.
Balanced attitude scale (for research)6 questions
Six statements for a single attitude score. Half are worded negatively on purpose, so reverse those three before you add them up (see the scoring section).
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Getting a good education matters to me.
Strongly disagree12345Strongly agree1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agreePositive item. Scored as answered, 1 to 5.
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School is mostly a waste of my time.
Strongly disagree12345Strongly agree1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agreeNegative item. Reverse it: 5 becomes 1, 4 becomes 2.
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Learning something new is one of the good parts of my week.
Strongly disagree12345Strongly agree1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agreePositive item. Scored as answered.
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Most of what we do in class feels pointless.
Strongly disagree12345Strongly agree1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agreeNegative item. Reverse before scoring.
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I would keep studying even if nobody checked my work.
Strongly disagree12345Strongly agree1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agreePositive item. Scored as answered.
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I only do schoolwork because I have to.
Strongly disagree12345Strongly agree1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agreeNegative item. Reverse before scoring. It also catches students who agree with everything.
About you (optional)2 questions
Only for comparing groups. Attitudes shift a lot between ages, so the stage question is the useful one. Skip reporting on tiny groups, where the answers of one student could be spotted.
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Which stage of school are you in?
Grades 6 to 8Grades 9 to 10Grades 11 to 12College or universityPrefer not to sayLiking for school drops sharply in the early secondary years, so compare each stage with itself.1
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How long have you been at this school?
Less than a year1 to 2 years3 years or moreNew students often answer differently; this keeps a new intake from hiding a trend.
Feel, think, do: what an attitude survey measures
Psychologists define an attitude as an evaluation of a person, an idea or an object, with three parts: feelings, beliefs and behaviour.2 Asking about all three is what separates an attitude survey from a satisfaction rating.
| Part (core questions) | A positive attitude sounds like | A negative attitude sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| Feel (1 to 3) | "I like coming in, most lessons are fun" | "I dread Mondays, it all stresses me out" |
| Think (4 to 7) | "This will help me later, and trying pays off" | "None of this matters, the rules are unfair" |
| Do (8 to 10) | Work in on time, keeps going, joins in | Late work, gives up early, stays silent |
The three parts do not always line up, and the gaps are where the useful findings sit. A student who likes school but believes effort makes no difference needs a different conversation from one who sees the point of school but hates the pressure. Read the core by part before you read it as a whole.
These are also the attitude examples students recognise. Ask a class to sort a few of the sentences above into feel, think and do and they will explain their own attitudes more clearly in the open questions.
Spare five minutes? The short attitude check
Squeezing it into a spare five minutes? These five give you the overall feeling, the pressure students carry, whether school seems worth it, one habit and one change.
- 01How do you feel about school at the moment?
- 02I can keep up with my schoolwork without feeling stressed.
- 03What I learn at school will help me later in life.
- 04When schoolwork gets hard, I keep going instead of giving up.
- 05If you could change one thing about school, what would it be?
Attitude answers are easy to misread
Attitude questions look simple, and their answers are simple to misread. Four practices keep the answers honest and the results useful.
Students in England who like school a lot, by age (2022)
Survey before the dip, not after it
Liking for school falls fast in the first years of secondary school. In England in 2022, a quarter of 11 year olds liked school a lot, and by 13 that had dropped to 11%.1 Run the core early in grade 6 or the first term of middle school, then again a year later, and you see the change while you can still act on it.
Ask about feelings, beliefs and habits separately
An attitude has an emotional part, a belief part and a behaviour part.2 One "Do you like school?" question blends them. The core gives each part its own statements, so a class that enjoys lessons but has stopped handing work in shows up as exactly that.
Put pressure in the same survey
Stress from schoolwork sours attitudes. HBSC England found the share of students feeling a lot of pressure rose from 17% in 2014 to 32% in 2022, while liking school halved, and girls reported it far more often than boys (42% against 23%).1 Question 3 keeps pressure next to liking, so you can see whether one explains the other in your school.
Word some statements the other way round
Students who are bored of surveys tick the same column all the way down. Likert's fix, from the paper that introduced the agree scale, was to word roughly half the statements so the favourable answer sits on the opposite side.3 The research scale does this; keep the core positive so the percent-agree report reads one way.
Want a quick read before a full survey? Show the first core question to the room as a live poll, and the four answer bars grow while students vote. It opens a good discussion about why school feels the way it does. Never run one? Our poll setup walkthrough explains how students join from any device.
How do your students compare? National figures to check against
England's HBSC study asks 11, 13 and 15 year olds how they feel about school with the same four answers as the first core question.1 That gives you a fair comparison point.
| HBSC England measure | 2014 | 2018 | 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Like school a lot | 32% | 23% | 16% |
| Feel a sense of belonging at school | 75% | 56% | 47% |
| Feel safe at school | 82% | 67% | 58% |
| Feel a lot of pressure from schoolwork | 17% | 24% | 32% |
Making the comparison
- Count the students who chose "I like it a lot" on question 1 and work that out as a share of all who answered.
- Compare with the age that matches your group: in 2022, 25% of 11 year olds liked school a lot, against 11% at 13 and at 15.1
- Do the same with "I like it a bit" added in, which gives the share who are broadly positive.
- Treat question 3 as your pressure reading. It is worded as coping, so a low percent agree lines up with a high HBSC pressure figure.
A class of 12 year olds well above the 11% seen at 13 is doing something right, even if the number looks small on its own.1 Keep your own results from each round, because your trend over a year says more than any single national figure.
Build an attitude report for staff or students
Key in the tallies from your eight core statements, one box per scale point. The bars then line up from strongest to weakest attitude, and the finished page prints for your next staff briefing or class discussion.
- 1For each statement, count every 4 and 5, then set that count against its total answers: that share is percent agree. The report calculates it while you type.
- 2Group the bars by part. In this report, statements 1 and 2 are feel, 3 to 6 are think, 7 and 8 are do. The weakest part tells you where to start.
- 3Read the open answers for the lowest statements first. They usually name the cause in plain words.
- 4Show students the two highest and two lowest results and ask what should change. Repeat the survey the following term to check whether anything moved.
Attitude results
Scoring the attitude scale for a project or thesis
The balanced scale gives each student one attitude score from 6 to 30. It follows the method Rensis Likert published in 1932, which is where the agree scale came from.3
Four steps to a score
- Give every answer a value: Strongly disagree = 1 through Strongly agree = 5.
- Reverse the three negative statements (2, 4 and 6 in the set): 1 becomes 5, 2 becomes 4, 3 stays 3.
- Add the six values. Likert summed the item values in the same way, with 1 always at the unfavourable end.3
- Report the mean score for each group with the number who answered.
A worked example
| Statement | Answered | Scored |
|---|---|---|
| Education matters to me | 4 | 4 |
| School is mostly a waste of time (reversed) | 2 | 4 |
| Learning something new is a good part of my week | 3 | 3 |
| Class feels pointless (reversed) | 1 | 5 |
| I would study even if nobody checked | 3 | 3 |
| Schoolwork only because I have to (reversed) | 4 | 2 |
This student scores 21 of a possible 30, a mildly positive attitude with one warning sign: they mostly do the work because they must. Why mix the wording at all? Likert advised wording about half the statements the other way round so that nobody can tick one column all the way down without reading.3 A student who agrees with both "education matters" and "school is a waste of time" has told you their answers need a second look.
If your supervisor wants an established scale
The School Attitude Assessment Survey-Revised (SAAS-R) is the best known one for secondary students: 35 items across attitudes toward school, attitudes toward teachers, goal valuation, motivation and academic self-perceptions, each part with reliability of at least .85 in its first study.4 Students answer it on a 7-point agree scale.5 Its wording belongs to its authors, so request permission before reusing the items. Everything in our bank is original wording, free to adapt, build them in the online form builder, and pair them with other questions for schools and classes.
Whole-class paper version with a tally sheet
Hand the questionnaire out at the start of a lesson and a whole class answers in one sitting, including the students who ignore links. Each PDF is sized to print well on US letter as well as A4.
Student attitude questionnaire
The twelve core questions fill page one, with boxes for a pencil tick. After that come the subject, classroom and research sets.
Download PDF
Attitude results worksheet
Count the answers to the first question, tally the eight statements, and pick the two lowest to act on.
Download PDFWeak attitude questions and stronger versions
Attitude questions go wrong in predictable ways: they judge the student, lead to an answer or ask two things at once. For rules that apply to every topic, read our guide to wording survey questions.
Do you have a good attitude towards school?
How do you feel about school at the moment? (I like it a lot ... I don't like it at all)
Nobody admits to a bad attitude. Asking how school feels gets the same information without the judgement.
Don't you agree that homework is important?
What I learn at school will help me later in life.
Phrased like that, the question hands over its preferred reply. A neutral statement lets them disagree.
Do you like your teachers and follow the rules?
My teachers want every student to do well.
The rules at this school are fair.
Two attitudes are packed together. Someone who likes the teachers but finds the rules unfair has no honest answer.
How is your behaviour in class?
I behave the same way whether or not a teacher is watching.
A vague self-rating gets "fine". A specific statement about a situation gets a real answer.
Student attitude surveys: quick answers
For teachers, counsellors and students writing up a research project.
What is an attitude survey?
A set of statements people rate on an agree-disagree scale, used to measure how they evaluate something: a school, a subject, a rule. Rensis Likert introduced the method in 1932 to measure attitudes, and it is still how most attitude questionnaires work.3
What are examples of attitude questions for students?
"How do you feel about school at the moment?", "What I learn at school will help me later in life" and "When schoolwork gets hard, I keep going instead of giving up." The first asks about feelings, the second about beliefs and the third about behaviour.
How is attitude different from motivation?
Attitude is how a student evaluates school; motivation is the reason they put in effort. They overlap, but a student can like school and still lack the drive to work. For reasons and drive, use the motivation questions for students.
How many questions should an attitude questionnaire have?
For a school, the twelve core questions are enough and take about five minutes. For a research score, use at least the six-statement balanced scale, and more items give a steadier score.
Should the survey be anonymous?
Yes. Students are more candid about disliking school or ignoring rules when no name is attached. For before-and-after studies, let each student make up a code word to match their two answer sheets.
See school through your students' eyes
Send the twelve core questions to student phones as an online survey, or hand out the paper version and gather it in as the lesson ends.
