ADKAR survey questions for one change, stage by stage
A questionnaire that finds which of the five stages a change is stuck at, bounded to one named change. Thirteen questions, about four minutes, and a per-stage read rather than one satisfaction score. Answer it below, or open it in the editor and put your own change name in.
- 13questions
- about 4 minto answer
- 5-point agreeplus one open answer
- 1 changeper response
What an ADKAR survey measures
Which of the five stages one named change is stuck at, rather than whether people are happy about it.
Five stages, read separately. Awareness, desire, knowledge, ability and reinforcement. The point of asking them apart is that the fix differs: more communication does nothing for a change people understand perfectly and do not want, and a training course does nothing for one nobody has heard of.
One change, named in question 1. Readiness in the abstract is a mood. Readiness for a specific thing, with a date on it, is something a project can act on this week.
ADKAR is a registered trademark of Prosci Inc, which developed the model and its five elements. This page is not affiliated with Prosci and is not a Prosci assessment. The questions below were written for this template and reproduce no Prosci material.[1] If your question is a reorganisation and its effect on engagement rather than capability, the change readiness assessment is the closer instrument. All thirteen are loaded and editable in the online survey maker.
The 13 ADKAR survey questions
Every question, the scale it takes, and what a low score points at. Copy one block or the whole set.
The change
Two fields first. A stage score that does not name its change cannot be acted on, and somebody barely affected should not be averaged with somebody whose whole job moves.
- Which change are you answering about?The name people actually use for it, not the programme name on the slide deck.
- How much does this change affect your day-to-day work?Exposure. Low readiness from the heavily affected group is the finding; low readiness from the barely affected is noise.
Awareness
Whether people can explain the change and why it is happening. Being told is not the same as being able to repeat it.
- I can explain what is changing to somebody who has not heard about it.Explain it to somebody else, which is a harder test than recognising it. This is the item that exposes a communications plan that only broadcast.
- I understand why this change is happening now.Why NOW, which is the half most announcements leave out. People accept a reason more readily than a decision.
Desire
Whether they want it to happen. This is the stage a project plan cannot mandate and the one most readiness surveys skip.
- I think this change is worth making.Worth making, in their judgement, not whether they will comply. Disagreement here with high Knowledge scores predicts quiet non-adoption.
- I can see what this change means for me personally, good or bad.What it means for me, allowing a negative answer. Somebody who can see a real cost and says so is more useful than somebody who has not thought about it.
Knowledge
Whether they know what to do differently, and whether anybody has shown them.
- I know what I will have to do differently.Do differently, in concrete terms. A high Awareness score with a low score here means the message landed and the detail did not.
- I have had the training or guidance I need to work the new way.Training or guidance, whichever was offered. Low scores are a delivery problem with a date attached, which makes this the most actionable item in the set.
Ability
Knowing and being able to are different. This is where a change that was well communicated still stalls.
- I could work the new way today if I had to.Today, if they had to. The gap between this and question 7 is the gap between a course and competence.
- When I get stuck with the new way, I know who to ask.Who to ask when stuck. Support routes are usually designed for launch week and not for the month after.
Reinforcement, then the score
Whether they believe it will last, one open answer, then the rating. Asked in that order so the rating is a judgement.
- I expect the new way to still be in place in six months.The cynicism item. Disagreement usually means a previous change was announced and quietly dropped, which is history rather than a fault of this change.
- What would help you most with this change?What would help, not what is wrong. It returns requests you can act on rather than a list of complaints.
- Overall, how ready do you feel for this change?The single readiness number, asked last so everything above it has been considered.
Nine items use one agree scale throughout: Strongly agree, Agree, Neither agree nor disagree, Disagree, Strongly disagree. It is deliberately identical across all five stages, because a stage-by-stage read only compares if the scale underneath it does not move.
Written for this page. None of these is a Prosci item. Use them, edit them, and change the wording to name your own systems and teams.
Reading it, stage by stage
Five stage scores and one rating. Do not average the thirteen into a single number.
Score each stage on its own. Take the agree items 5 down to 1 and average within the stage: questions 3 to 4, 5 to 6, 7 to 8, 9 to 10, and question 11 alone. The lowest stage is the one to work on, and it is the only conclusion this survey is designed to produce.
The barrier is the FIRST weak stage, not the weakest one. Read them in order. If awareness is low it does not matter that ability is lower, because nobody can practise a change they have not heard of. Fix in sequence.
Cut by question 2 before you conclude anything. The people whose work changes most are the ones whose scores should drive the plan. A comfortable average across everybody hides the group that actually has to change.
| If this stage is lowest | What it usually means | What actually helps |
|---|---|---|
| Awareness (Q3 to Q4) | It was announced once, in one channel, without saying why now | Say it again through the line, with the reason and the timing |
| Desire (Q5 to Q6) | People understand it and can see it costs them something | A straight conversation about the cost, not more messaging |
| Knowledge (Q7 to Q8) | The message landed and the detail never followed | Training with a date, and written steps for the new way |
| Ability (Q9 to Q10) | They were taught it once and cannot do it under real conditions | Practice time, and a named person to ask in the weeks after |
| Reinforcement (Q11) | A previous change was announced and quietly dropped | Visible follow-through, and closing out the last one first |
Sending the ADKAR questionnaire
Three decisions before it goes out.
Run it twice, with the same wording. Once after the announcement and before go-live, once a month or two after. The first tells you whether to change the plan; the second tells you whether it worked. Different questions each time makes the comparison meaningless.
Keep it anonymous. The two stages that carry the real information, desire and reinforcement, are exactly the two people soften when they can be identified. Question 2 gives you the only cut most changes need.
Name the change the way people say it. Programme names invented for a steering committee get low awareness scores because nobody recognises the words, which reads as a communication failure that is really a naming one. Wording and ordering follow published survey practice on clarity and bias.[2]
Then pick the adjacent check. If the gap is a skill the team never had, that is the training needs assessment. If a course has already been delivered and you want to know whether it stuck, use the post training survey.
Two nearby reads that are not this one. If the change is simply that somebody new has started, their first fortnight is the induction feedback form rather than a readiness read. And if what you actually want is the general mood this quarter, with the change as only one part of it, that is an employee pulse survey; running a stage read for that purpose gives you five scores about a project and nothing about the team.
ADKAR survey FAQ
What is an ADKAR survey?
A short questionnaire that asks people about one named change across five stages: whether they are aware of it, whether they want it, whether they know what to do differently, whether they are able to do it, and whether they think it will last. The value is that it tells you WHICH stage is weak, so the response is targeted instead of more communication by default. ADKAR is a Prosci model and a Prosci trademark; this template is not a Prosci assessment.[1]
What questions should an ADKAR survey ask?
Two or three per stage, written for the specific change rather than in the abstract. The thirteen on this page are a working set: two on awareness, two on desire, two on knowledge, two on ability, one on reinforcement, plus the change name, an exposure question, an open answer and a closing rating.
When should you run it?
Twice at least. Once after the change is announced and before it lands, which is when a low awareness or desire score can still change the plan, and once a month or two after go-live, when ability and reinforcement are the stages that matter. Same questions both times, so the two are comparable.
Should it be anonymous?
Anonymous is the default, because the honest answers are on desire and reinforcement, and those are the two people soften when their manager can see them. Question 2 records how affected they are, which is usually the only cut you need, and it identifies nobody in a group of any size.
How do you read the results?
Take each stage on its own rather than averaging all thirteen. The lowest stage is the one to work on, and the response differs by stage: a low awareness score needs communication, a low desire score needs a conversation about what it costs people, a low knowledge or ability score needs training and support, and a low reinforcement score needs visible follow-through on the last change before anybody believes this one.
ADKAR reads one change at the awareness stage, and it is meant to be re-run as the comms land. When what you are reporting on is a programme with a start, an end and a funder asking whether it worked, the program evaluation survey questions go to the people who were in it.
Methods and sources
What this template is based on
Thirteen questions written for this page, two or three per stage, ordered so the stages are read in sequence rather than averaged. Nine share one worded five-point agree scale so each stage averages cleanly, and the open answer sits before the closing rating.[2]
Question licensing
ADKAR is a registered trademark of Prosci Inc, which developed the model and its five elements. This page is not affiliated with Prosci and is not a Prosci assessment. The questions below were written for this template and reproduce no Prosci material. The model is named and linked because it is the vocabulary readers search with, and describing a published model in our own words is the ceiling this site works to for proprietary frameworks.[1]
Limits and disclosure
This is self-reported readiness for one change at one moment, which is a plan input rather than a prediction. The stage scores are ours and are not comparable with any Prosci measure or certification output. Run it twice with identical wording or the comparison is not worth making, and read the open answers before any average.
SuperSurvey builds the editor this template opens in. Nothing on this page depends on using it.
References
- Prosci Inc. The Prosci ADKAR Model. ADKAR is a registered trademark of Prosci Inc. Named and linked only; no Prosci item or assessment is reproduced on this page. prosci.com
- American Association for Public Opinion Research. "Best Practices for Survey Research." aapor.org
Find out which stage the change is stuck at
Thirteen questions, about four minutes, and a per-stage read instead of one satisfaction score. Put your own change name in and send it.
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