A diversity and inclusion survey is a confidential employee questionnaire that measures two things: who makes up your workforce and how fairly different groups experience work. Comparing answers across groups shows where belonging, fair treatment, and career access break down. That tells you which problems to fix first.
Headcount reports tell you who you hired. They can’t tell you whether a Black engineer feels safe disagreeing in a design review, or whether working parents see a real path to promotion. A DEI survey fills that gap, whether your company calls the work DEI, inclusion, or belonging.
In this guide, we’ll cover 30 sample questions grouped by theme and a seven-step process for running the survey. You’ll also learn how to protect anonymity and turn group gaps into action.
What is a diversity and inclusion survey?
A diversity and inclusion survey (DEI or DEIB survey) is an employee survey that pairs voluntary demographic questions with statements about fairness, voice, and belonging. DEI stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion; DEIB adds belonging. Reports always show results by group, never by individual.
The survey measures four related ideas. Each one needs its own questions, because a company can score well on one and poorly on another.
- Diversity: The mix of identities, backgrounds, and experiences in the workforce, measured as representation by level, team, and function.
- Equity: Fair access to pay, promotion, resources, and support, measured as perceived fairness of people processes.
- Inclusion: Whether people are heard, respected, and involved, measured through voice and involvement in decisions.
- Belonging: Whether people feel accepted as themselves, measured through emotional connection and authenticity at work.
Representation is a count. Inclusion is an experience. A diverse company can still score low on inclusion if under-represented groups feel unheard, which is why a good survey measures both.
How is a DEI survey different from engagement and culture surveys?
A DEI survey asks whether different groups experience the same workplace in the same way. Engagement and culture surveys ask how the workforce feels overall, so they can miss gaps that only appear when you split results by identity.
| Survey type | Core question | How results are cut | Best time to use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Diversity and inclusion survey | Do all groups experience fairness and belonging equally? | Always by demographic group, with privacy thresholds | Annual baseline plus short pulses |
| Employee engagement survey | How committed and motivated are employees? | Mostly by team, manager, and tenure | Once or twice a year |
| Culture survey | Which values and behaviors shape how work gets done? | By department, level, or location | During growth, mergers, or major change |
| Demographic questionnaire | Who are the respondents? | Becomes the filter variables for other surveys | Inside almost any survey |
Many companies add 6 to 10 inclusion items to their engagement survey instead of running a separate instrument. That works well when the engagement survey already collects voluntary demographics and reports by group. If you need wording for the identity questions themselves, our guide to demographic survey questions covers inclusive answer options for race, gender, disability, and more.
Why do organizations run diversity and inclusion surveys?
Organizations run diversity and inclusion surveys to replace assumptions with group-level evidence. Employees also expect it. A national workplace inclusion study surveyed 1,000 full-time US employees. In it, 37% of workers, 45% of Black workers, and 54% of managers said they would switch jobs for a more inclusive culture.
Support is broad but not universal. Among employed US adults, 56% say focusing on increasing DEI at work is a good thing. That split is one more reason to measure what employees actually experience rather than guess.
A well-run survey helps you:
- Find engagement gaps: See which groups or teams feel less connected, even when the company average looks healthy.
- Surface unmet needs: Learn about needs such as parental leave, religious holiday flexibility, or accessibility support.
- Target training: Aim manager and team training at the behaviors employees say are missing.
- Clarify career paths: Spot groups who see fewer growth opportunities or less access to sponsors.
- Test programs: Check whether mentoring, employee resource groups (ERGs, voluntary employee-led groups), or new policies change anything.
- Catch problems early: Detect exclusion, harassment, or uncomfortable situations before they turn into resignations or legal claims.
Do DEI surveys still matter if your company has rebranded DEI?
Yes. The label may change, but the need to measure fairness and belonging stays the same. Many US employers have renamed their programs since 2025 without dropping the underlying work.
A survey of US leaders found that 78% of C-suite executives are relabeling their DEI programs. Common replacements include terms like employee engagement and belonging. If that describes your organization, call the instrument an inclusion survey, a belonging survey, or a workplace fairness survey. The questions can stay the same.
What should change is the framing.
- Universal items: Focus on experiences every employee can answer, such as fair treatment, voice, and respect.
- Voluntary identity data: Keep every demographic question optional, with a “prefer not to say” choice.
- Process focus: Use results to improve processes for everyone, never to make decisions about individual employees.
- Legal review: Rules on collecting identity data vary by state and country, so have HR or legal counsel review the demographic section before launch.
30 Diversity and inclusion survey questions by theme
The diversity and inclusion survey questions below use a five-point agreement scale (strongly disagree to strongly agree) unless noted. They expand the five areas of our original sample questionnaire with belonging and open-ended items. You can also start from a ready-made diversity and inclusion survey template and edit from there.
Organizational commitment to inclusion
These four items test whether employees believe leadership means what it says.
- “Senior leaders demonstrate a visible commitment to an inclusive workplace.”
- “This organization respects individuals and values their differences.”
- “Our leadership team reflects the diversity of our workforce.”
- “I understand what this organization is doing to make the workplace fairer.”
Recruitment and hiring
Hiring items work best when you also ask employees who joined in the last 12 months.
| # | Statement | What a low score suggests |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | “This organization hires people from many different backgrounds.” | Narrow sourcing channels or referral-heavy hiring |
| 6 | “Our job interviews treat every candidate fairly.” | Unstructured interviews or inconsistent panels |
| 7 | “I would recommend this company to a friend from an under-represented group.” | Reputation risk with diverse candidates |
| 8 | “My onboarding helped me understand how things really work here.” | Unwritten rules that favor insiders |
Fairness in pay, promotion, and growth
Equity questions reveal whether people believe the system rewards effort equally.
- “Promotion decisions here are based on performance, not connections.”
- “I believe I am paid fairly compared with others in similar roles.”
- “I have the same access to stretch assignments as my peers.”
- “I have a realistic path to advance in this organization.”
- “Someone more senior actively supports my career growth.”
Manager behavior
Managers shape daily inclusion more than any policy does, so these items matter most at the team level.
| # | Statement | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| 14 | “My manager treats all team members with equal respect.” | Basic fairness at the team level |
| 15 | “My manager handles conflicts and complaints fairly.” | Trust in escalation |
| 16 | “My manager makes time to understand my needs and goals.” | Individual attention and development |
| 17 | “My manager would act if someone on our team was treated unfairly.” | Willingness to intervene |
Harassment, discrimination, and reporting
These items measure both the climate and confidence in the reporting process.
- “I have not experienced discrimination or harassment at work in the past 12 months.” (yes / no / prefer not to say)
- “I know how to report discrimination or harassment.”
- “I trust that a report would be taken seriously and handled fairly.”
- “I could report a problem without fear of retaliation.”
Belonging and psychological safety
Psychological safety means people feel safe to speak up, ask questions, or admit mistakes without fear of punishment.
| # | Statement | What it captures |
|---|---|---|
| 22 | “I feel like I belong at this organization.” | Overall belonging |
| 23 | “I can be myself at work without worrying about how I’ll be judged.” | Authenticity |
| 24 | “I can voice a different opinion without fear of negative consequences.” | Speaking up |
| 25 | “Perspectives like mine are considered when decisions are made.” | Voice in decisions |
| 26 | “People here value colleagues with different backgrounds.” | Peer respect |
Open-ended questions
Open-ended questions explain the scores. Keep them optional, limit them to four, and remind people not to include names.
- “What is one thing that would make you feel more included here?”
- “Have you ever felt out of place here because of who you are? If so, what happened?”
- “What should leaders start, stop, or continue doing to make this a fairer place to work?”
- “Is there anything else you want us to know?”
How to conduct a DEI survey in 7 steps
To conduct a DEI survey, decide what you will act on, protect anonymity, ask a focused set of questions, and report back. The steps below work for a 50-person company or a 50,000-person enterprise.
- Define the decisions the survey must inform.
Pick one or two goals, such as “find where promotion fairness differs by group” or “set a belonging baseline.” Delete items that serve neither. - Get leadership to commit to acting.
Agree in advance on who owns results, when employees will hear back, and what budget exists for change. - Choose the groups you will report on.
Select only the demographic groups you can analyze safely. Make every identity question voluntary, with “prefer not to say” and self-describe options. - Draft 20 to 30 items and pilot them.
Test the draft with 5 to 10 employees from different backgrounds, including ERG members. Remove anything confusing, loaded, or double-barreled. - Pick anonymous or confidential administration.
Decide whether demographics come from the survey or from your HR system, and explain the choice to employees. - Launch with a clear privacy message.
Keep the survey open for about two weeks, send two reminders, and make sure it works on mobile and with screen readers. Offer translations where your workforce needs them. - Share results and the action plan.
Present findings to all employees, not only leadership, and name the two or three changes you will make first.
How do you keep a DEI survey anonymous?
You keep a DEI survey anonymous by hiding small groups, separating identity from responses, and limiting who sees raw data. Trust drives honest answers, and honest answers are the whole point of the survey.
Anonymous vs. confidential DEI surveys
Most employers choose between two models. Our guide to anonymous surveys explains the trade-offs in more detail.
| Model | How it works | Strength | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anonymous | No identifiers are collected; employees self-report demographics | Highest perceived privacy | Demographics are optional, so some groups may be incomplete |
| Confidential | Responses link to HR data such as department or tenure, but reports only show groups | Shorter survey and cleaner group data | Employees must trust the vendor and HR to keep the link private |
Privacy rules to apply before you report
Apply these rules whichever model you choose.
- Minimum group size: Hide any result for a group with fewer than 5 respondents. Many teams raise the threshold to 8 or 10 for sensitive demographic cuts.
- Careful intersections: Combining two attributes shrinks groups fast. Women of color in a 15-person engineering team may be only two people.
- Comment screening: Review open-ended answers for names or details that identify someone before sharing quotes.
- Restricted access: Limit raw data to a small analysis team, and give managers only aggregated team views.
- Plain-language promise: Tell employees exactly who sees what, in one or two sentences at the start of the survey.
How often should you run a diversity and inclusion survey?
Run a full diversity and inclusion survey once a year and short pulses in between. Annual surveys set the baseline, while pulses check whether specific actions are working.
| Format | Length | Frequency | Best use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full inclusion survey | 20 to 30 items | Once a year | Baseline by group, trend tracking |
| Pulse check | 3 to 5 items | Quarterly at most | Testing whether one action moved one score |
| Event-triggered survey | 5 to 10 items | After a reorganization, merger, or policy change | Catching new gaps quickly |
| Lifecycle survey | 5 to 8 items | At onboarding and exit | Comparing hiring and exit experiences by group |
Surveying more often than quarterly usually lowers response rates, because employees stop seeing change between rounds. For pulse design, see our guide to employee pulse surveys.
How to analyze diversity and inclusion survey results
Analyze diversity and inclusion survey results by turning each theme into a percent-favorable score. Then compare groups against the overall score and read comments for the reasons behind the gaps.
Calculate percent-favorable scores
Percent favorable is the share of respondents who chose agree or strongly agree. Build your scores in two layers.
- Item score: The percent favorable for each statement, calculated for every group that meets your privacy threshold.
- Theme index: The average of the item scores within one theme, such as a belonging index or a fairness index.
One clear number per theme makes results easy to compare across groups and years.
Compare groups and flag gaps
The real insight sits in the gaps between groups. As a rule of thumb, investigate any gap of 5 points or more from the overall score. Treat 10 points or more as a priority. The hypothetical example below shows one item.
| Group (hypothetical) | Respondents | % favorable: “I can voice a different opinion without fear” | Gap vs. overall |
|---|---|---|---|
| All employees | 640 | 72% | 0 |
| Men | 330 | 76% | +4 |
| Women | 290 | 69% | -3 |
| Black employees | 58 | 58% | -14 |
| Employees with a disability | 41 | 61% | -11 |
| Employees aged 55+ | 72 | 70% | -2 |
The company average of 72% looks acceptable. The group view shows two clear priorities that the average hid.
Read the comments for the “why”
Open-ended answers explain what the scores cannot. Group comments into themes, then compare which themes each group raises most often.
- Recurring themes: Note topics that appear across several groups, such as meeting behavior or unclear promotion criteria.
- Group-specific themes: Flag topics raised mostly by one group, since these often explain a score gap.
- Specific incidents: Route any report of harassment to the proper HR process, not the survey team.
Track change over time
Keep at least 80% of your items identical from year to year so trends stay comparable. When a gap narrows after an action, you have evidence the action worked. When it widens, you have an early warning.
How to turn DEI survey results into action
Turning DEI survey results into action means picking a few priorities, testing explanations with the affected employees, and reporting progress publicly. Results that disappear into a slide deck lower trust and participation next year.
- Pick two or three priorities.
Choose the largest gaps that leaders can realistically influence within a year. More than three usually means none get done. - Test your explanations with employees.
Run listening sessions or focus groups with the affected groups, often through ERGs, before designing fixes. - Assign owners, actions, and metrics.
Give each priority one owner, a deadline, and a target survey score. Simple action planning tools help managers track progress at the team level. - Report back before the next survey.
Tell employees what changed because of their feedback. That message does more for response rates than any reminder email.
Common diversity and inclusion survey mistakes
The most common mistakes come from weak design or no follow-through, not from asking the wrong topics. Watch for these patterns.
- Surveying with no plan to act: Asking about fairness and then doing nothing damages trust more than not asking.
- Mandatory identity questions: Forcing answers on race, gender, or disability pushes people to quit or answer falsely.
- Double-barreled items: “My manager is fair and inclusive” asks two things. Split it into two statements.
- Leading wording: “How much do you appreciate our DEI programs?” assumes a positive answer. Use neutral agreement statements instead.
- Reporting tiny groups: Showing results for three people can expose individuals and break your anonymity promise.
- Stopping at the average: An overall score hides the group gaps the survey exists to find.
- Changing items every year: Rewording core questions breaks trend lines, so you can’t tell whether actions worked.
How QuestionPro supports diversity and inclusion surveys
QuestionPro supports diversity and inclusion surveys mainly by keeping identity data out of the questionnaire while still reporting by group. QuestionPro Employee Experience connects to your HR system (HRIS, the software that stores employee records) through an API or FTP roster integration. Demographics then stay current without asking employees to re-enter them.
That setup brings a few specific benefits for inclusion measurement.
- Shorter surveys: Employees answer the inclusion items only, which keeps completion times low.
- Respondent anonymity assurance: Individual responses can’t be traced back to an employee, and role-based access controls who sees which results.
- Theme detection in comments: Text and Sentiment AI groups open-ended answers into themes and flags shifts in sentiment by team or group.
- Manager follow-through: Empower Action Planning lets managers build and track plans from their own team data.
If you are comparing platforms built for this work, our roundup of DEI software covers what to look for beyond surveys.
Measure the experience, not just the headcount
A diversity and inclusion survey earns its value in the gaps. Representation numbers show who is in the room. Group-level survey results show who feels heard, treated fairly, and able to grow once they get there.
Start small if you need to. Ten well-chosen items, a firm anonymity threshold, and a visible response beat a 60-question survey nobody acts on. Then repeat the same core items each year, and let the trend lines show whether your workplace is becoming fairer for everyone.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
A full annual survey works well with 20 to 30 agreement items, 4 to 6 voluntary demographic questions, and up to 4 open-ended questions. That takes most employees about 10 minutes. Quarterly pulse checks should stay at 3 to 5 items.
Yes, but small companies should report fewer group cuts. With under 50 employees, most demographic groups fall below a five-person privacy threshold. Focus on company-wide scores, open comments, and broader groupings such as tenure or work location instead.
Using a third-party survey platform often raises participation, because employees trust that managers cannot see individual answers. The vendor should store data separately, enforce minimum group sizes, and give HR only aggregated reports, not raw responses linked to names.
A DEI survey measures perceptions, such as whether employees believe pay is fair. A pay equity audit analyzes actual payroll data to find unexplained pay differences between groups in similar roles. Many organizations run both and compare the findings.
All employees should see a company-level summary and the action plan. Leaders and HR should see group-level results that meet the privacy threshold. Managers should see only their own team’s aggregated scores, and only when the team meets the minimum size.
