Assessing the Past and Promise of the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey for Public Management Research: A Research Synthesis

• Author: Zachary W. Oberfield,Tima Moldogaziev,William G. Resh,Sergio Fernandez
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12368
• Published date: 01 May 2015
• Date: 01 May 2015

Research

Synthesis

Sergio Fernandez is associate profes-

sor in Indiana University’s School of Public

and Environmental Affairs and director of

the PhD in public affairs and joint PhD in

public policy programs. His research focuses

on organizational behavior in the public

sector, government contracting and out-

sourcing, and representative bureaucracy.

E-mail: sefernan@indiana.edu

William G. Resh is assistant professor

in the University of Southern California’s

Sol Price School of Public Policy. His book

The Administrative Presidency:

Appointee-Careerist Relations in the

George W. Bush Administration will

be released in the fall of 2015 by Johns

Hopkins University Press.

E-mail: wresh@usc.edu

Tima Moldogaziev is assistant profes-

sor in The University of Georgia’s School of

Public and International Affairs. His research

interests in public f‌i nance are related to

matters of f‌i nancial intermediation and

regulation, municipal securities pricing and

liquidity, and access to capital for subna-

tional governments. In public management,

he conducts research on empowerment,

performance, and innovativeness. He

teaches courses in public f‌i nancial admin-

istration, budgeting and debt f‌i nance, and

applied statistics.

E-mail: timatm@uga.edu

Zachary W. Oberf‌i eld is assistant

professor of political science at Haverford

College. His research focuses on diversity,

organizational socialization, and street-

level bureaucracy. His book Becoming

Bureaucrats: Socialization at the

Front Lines of Government Service

(University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014)

studies the development of police off‌i cers

and welfare caseworkers during the f‌i rst

two years of their careers.

E-mail: zoberf‌i e@haverford.edu

382 Public Administration Review • May | June 2015

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 75, Iss. 3, pp. 382–394. © 2015 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12368.

Michael McGuire, Editor

Sergio Fernandez

Indiana University, Bloomington

William G. Resh

University of Southern California

Tima Moldogaziev

The University of Georgia

Zachary W. Oberf‌i eld

Haverford College

Abstract: Since 2002, the U.S. Of‌f‌i ce of Personnel Management has used the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey

(FEVS) to monitor ef‌f orts by federal executive agencies to manage human capital. Public management researchers

have used FEVS data to produce dozens of peer-reviewed publications on a range of topics of interest to policy makers,

practitioners, and academics. Despite the proliferation of these empirical studies, the f‌i eld of public management until

now has lacked a critical assessment of the FEVS and of how researchers have used the data. In this article, the authors

discuss the strengths of the FEVS and the opportunities this survey has created for public management researchers.

Despite important contributions made to the literature using the data, there are weaknesses in the content, design, and

implementation of the FEVS.  e authors of‌f er a set of recommendations for ref‌i ning the survey and its implementa-

tion with the aim of improving the quality and value of the data. In doing so, they hope to foster a dialogue between

public management researchers and the Of‌f‌i ce of Personnel Management on the future of the FEVS and to forge a

stronger link between these two communities.

date, from both a practitioner and an academic perspec-

tive, lacks a critical assessment of these surveys and of

how the data have been used to make contributions to

the public management literature. In this article, we

aim to undertake such an assessment.

In our review of more than 40 research articles based

on FEVS data, we f‌i nd that public management

researchers have used the survey to measure a number

of critical concepts and to enhance our understanding

of a range of organizational phenomena, including

dif‌f erent leadership styles and approaches, perform-

ance management practices, equity and fairness, diver-

sity management, change and innovation, employee

attitudes such as job satisfaction, dif‌f erent forms of

turnover intention, and performance. Pulling from

this sample of articles, we focus on employee empower-

ment and diversity management, two distinct constructs

that have been studied in a concerted manner using

FEVS data, to illustrate the advances that have been

achieved but also the limitations of using these survey

data. In assessing the contributions that public man-

agement researchers have made using FEVS data, we

also discuss the strengths and limitations of the FEVS

and explore the prospects for improving the quality

and value of these surveys. We conclude by of‌f ering

a set of recommendations to further advance public

management research and theory using FEVS data.

Our aim is to forge a stronger link between those in

OPM, which produces the FEVS data, and researchers

who use the data to generate scholarly work.

Assessing the Past and Promise of the Federal

Employee Viewpoint Survey for Public

Management Research: A Research Synthesis

For more than a decade, government of‌f‌i cials in

the United States, Australia, Canada, Germany,

Switzerland, and elsewhere have used large

surveys of public sector employees to gauge employee

perceptions and attitudes about their jobs, work-

ing conditions, organizational policies, coworkers,

leaders, and performance.  ese surveys have been

designed and implemented to enhance our under-

standing of how to improve managerial capacity and

performance and increase recruitment and retention

of talented managers and employees in government.

In 2002, the U.S. Of‌f‌i ce of Personnel Management

(OPM) launched the Federal Human Capital Survey

(FHCS)—now called the Federal Employee Viewpoint

Survey (FEVS)—using a stratif‌i ed sampling approach

to produce survey results that are representative of the

entire federal executive branch workforce as well as of

employees within individual agencies. Responses to

FEVS items concerning job satisfaction, satisfaction

with pay, and generic barometers of organizational

climate serve as indicators of trends within the federal

bureaucracy to both external and internal stakehold-

ers. Moreover, agencies regularly use particular items to

identify internal weaknesses and areas for improvement.

Public management researchers have also used these

survey data to produce several dozen peer-reviewed

articles, books, and other publications that examine

a variety of issues central to public management and

governance. Despite the proliferation of published work

based on FEVS data, the f‌i eld of public management to