Reversing the Lens: Assessing the Use of Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey in Public Administration Research

• Author: Colin Angus Leslie,Tima Moldogaziev,Sergio Fernandez,William Resh
• Date: 01 March 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0734371X19865012
• Published date: 01 March 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X19865012

Review of Public Personnel Administration

2021, Vol. 41(1) 132 –162

© The Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/0734371X19865012

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Article

Reversing the Lens: Assessing

the Use of Federal Employee

Viewpoint Survey in Public

Administration Research

William Resh1, Tima Moldogaziev2,

Sergio Fernandez3, and Colin Angus Leslie1

Abstract

Despite the proliferation of published work using the U.S. Office of Personnel

Management’s (OPM) Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) data, the scholarly

community to date lacks a review of the practices and value associated with how

scholars have used the survey data in their research. We turn a lens at the public

administration research that has used the FEVS to this point. We assess the extent to

which peer-reviewed studies follow the fundamental criteria of conducting empirical

studies using survey data—from accepted guidelines and practices for preinferential

evaluations of survey data to the reporting of baseline and advanced standards and

practices of analytical methods for measurement and quantitative analysis. Our

review provides an overarching appraisement of public management scholarship

employing the FEVS, which can strengthen the partnership between OPM and public

administration scholars as they jointly continue improving the survey instrument and

pursue questions critical to effective governance.

Keywords

employee attitudes, behavior, motivation, methodological issues, Federal Employee

Viewpoint Survey, Federal Human Capital Survey, Office of Personnel Management,

survey research, secondary data, federal government HRM, human capital

1University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA

2Pennsylvania State University, State College, USA

3Indiana University Bloomington, USA

Corresponding Author:

William Resh, University of Southern California, 650 Childs Way, Ralph and Goldy Lewis Hall,

Los Angeles, CA 90089-0626, USA.

Email: wresh@price.usc.edu

865012ROPXXX10.1177/0734371X19865012Review of Public Personnel AdministrationResh et al.

research-article2019

Resh et al. 133

Introduction

In 2015, Fernandez, Resh, Moldogaziev, and Oberfield (2015) leveled an assess-

ment of the utility and promise of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM)

Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS)—a collection of attitudinal and per-

ceptual data from hundreds of thousands of federal employees, largely representa-

tive of the federal workforce, within and across agencies and programs. Their review

found dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles, books, and other publications that

examine a variety of issues central to public administration. Despite the proliferation

of published work based on FEVS data over the past decade or so, the field of public

administration to date had lacked a comprehensive assessment of the scholarly use,

value, and practices emerging from these surveys. Fernandez et al. (2015) provided

a thorough examination of the survey, its relative utility to research, and made rec-

ommendations that led to substantive changes in the survey (Personnel Management

in Agencies, 2016); however, we still lack a systematic assessment of how public

administration scholars have used the survey data in their research. The solitary

exception is a study by Somers (2018), who has offered an assessment of the psy-

chometric properties and qualities of the FEVS, albeit only in select studies that

have built constructs using items from FEVS data.

In this article, we take stock of peer-reviewed publications and the research ques-

tions scholars have explored using FEVS data—we consider the practices of current

survey data use, evaluate the practices related to methods and modeling, and identify

an array of best practices and guidance to public administration scholars. By doing

so, the article explores the prospects for improving the presentation and academic

value in the use of FEVS data or, for that matter, the secondary use of any survey

data.

We identify the best criteria for future use of the survey and for proper selection

of reporting practices and analytical tools—from preinferential assessment of the

survey attributes, selection of valid and reliable items and measures of constructs

claimed from the FEVS data, establishment of more rigorous tests of causality, data

aggregation practices utilized in longitudinal studies (agency- and subagency-level

analyses), to data mergers from other sources to mitigate potential common source

or method biases. Such criteria will be of great value for current and future scholars

who use survey data (FEVS and others), reviewers and readers evaluating scholarly

submissions, as well as practitioners seeking to apply the empirical findings from

academic research to public sector organizations. Therefore, our article turns the

lens from FEVS survey quality concerns in Fernandez et al. (2015) to the quality of

scholarly work that utilizes FEVS. At the same time, our article is broader in its

scope than Somers’ (2018), in that construct measurement quality, while extremely

important, is only one of the many considerations in this study. The three articles,

however, are complementary and we encourage both public administration scholars

and practitioners to consider them concurrently when employing the FEVS data in

future research and to consider best practices overall in relation to survey research

in public administration.