Survey Methodology
Public Servant Pulse, created by The People Lab, is an annual national survey on the experiences, perspectives, and challenges of U.S. public servants.
The survey measures public servant workplace experiences, predictors of those experiences, and public servant mindsets. The results are aggregated nationwide, creating national benchmarks for state and local government workforces.
Public Servant Pulse is conducted online through Qualtrics and is administered annually in late spring through early summer. The survey is distributed through professional networks, directly to public employees, through The People Lab's social media network, and through state and local government collaborators.
The survey takes approximately 10 minutes and includes roughly 50 items, including Likert-scale and open-text questions.
Results are released each year in early fall.
Data Source & Sampling
All U.S. local government (i.e., state, county, or city) employees are eligible to participate in Public Servant Pulse. Public Servant Pulse relies on a convenience sampling approach, recruiting respondents through a combination of direct email contacts, social media outreach, professional networks, and partner agencies and organizations. To verify that respondents are eligible, we ask a series of short screening questions at the beginning of the survey to confirm they work for a state, county, or city government. Following best practices, we also review data to identify duplicate or illegitimate responses.
Weighting
Survey weights are constructed using the American Community Survey Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) and raking (iterative proportional fitting) to align our sample with the national population of state and local public employees across age, gender, race, and educational attainment.
Data Use and Privacy Protections
Protecting respondents' privacy is a top priority. As researchers at Harvard University, we follow rigorous data security and research ethics standards. This study operates in alignment with Harvard's Research Data Security Policy and Institutional Review Board protocols (IRB25-1530).
Personally identifiable information collected in the survey will only be accessible to the immediate research team responsible for survey administration, and will only be used for creating a longitudinal data set and data quality validation purposes. All survey responses will be securely stored and encrypted.
Only aggregate information will be shared with governments and all survey data will be completely deidentified and anonymized prior to the release of public use datasets such that no individual respondent can be re-identified. To further protect confidentiality, we suppress or aggregate results for small groups, including by combining any cells with fewer than 20 respondents.
Employee Experience
One section of Public Servant Pulse is dedicated to directly measuring employee experience, using measures that capture workplace satisfaction, employee engagement, burnout, and organizational pride. These measures are key indicators of a healthy workforce and are associated with improved performance and public servant retention.
By drawing on questions from existing surveys like the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, the OECD/EU Survey of Public Servants, and the UK Civil Service People Survey, as well as from validated scales like the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory and the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory, Public Servant Pulse generates national benchmarks based on established measures of employee experience that allow for comparisons across local governments and internationally. Public Servant Pulse also includes some survey items designed for this survey that we expect will become benchmarks for future surveys by other scholars and practitioners.
Workplace Satisfaction
The Partnership for Public Service's "Best Places to Work" ranking for federal government employees has measured role, job, and organizational satisfaction since 2003. The rankings' primary metric is a score derived from three questions designed to measure employees' "intent to remain." Public Servant Pulse includes the three questions that make up the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (2010 – 2024) and Public Service Viewpoint Survey (2025) "Best Places to Work" index, with two also appearing in the OECD/EU Survey of Public Servants (2024).
Employee Engagement
Employee engagement is a positive, fulfilling, work-related psychological state characterized by cognitive, emotional, and physical engagement (Kahn, 1990). Public Servant Pulse includes three survey items to capture employee engagement, two of which can also be found on the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory and the OECD/EU Survey of Public Servants respectively, and one developed for this survey.
Burnout
Burnout is a workplace phenomenon characterized by emotional exhaustion, psychological distance from one's job, and reduced feelings of personal accomplishment (Demerouti, 1999). Burnout reflects a chronic response to sustained work-related stress. To measure burnout, Public Servant Pulse uses three items from the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory and the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory.
Organizational Pride
Organizational pride is a measure of organizational commitment, defined as a feeling of positive emotional identification and attachment toward one's organization (Mowday, Steers, and Porter, 1979). Public Servant Pulse includes one item on organizational pride adapted from Mowday, Steers, and Porter (1979), which also appears in the UK Civil Service People Survey (2025).
Intention to Quit
Understanding whether employees intend to leave their roles or the public sector is a critical metric for government leadership. Public Servant Pulse includes one item on intent to quit that matches the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (2010-2024).
Predictors of Employee Experience
Drawing on the public management literature, existing national and international surveys, and questions developed for this survey, Public Servant Pulse also measures key predictors of employee well-being, including whether one's basic psychological needs are met, feeling understood at work, psychological safety, team cohesion, belonging, red tape, pay expectations, workplace harassment, supervisor relationships, role conflict, and scope for innovation. These measures allow leaders to go beyond measuring the overall health of their workforce to pinpoint which underlying psychological mechanisms may be associated with the outcomes they observe, and where there may be room for improvements or success stories.
Feeling Understood
Feeling understood is the subjective impression that one is known by another person, and that the other person understands their experience (Reis et al., 2017). Public Servant Pulse includes questions developed for this survey on feeling understood by different groups that influence public sector employee experience, including colleagues, supervisors, and residents a public servant is called to serve.
Psychological Safety
Psychological safety is a belief that the work environment is safe for interpersonal risk-taking, including whether employees feel comfortable speaking up, asking questions, or making mistakes without fear of negative consequences. Public Servant Pulse includes one item from the psychological safety scale developed by Edmondson (1999).
Team Cohesion and Belonging
Belonging is a sense of inclusion, acceptance, and interpersonal trust at work. Relatedly, team cohesion refers to interpersonal closeness, effective cooperation, and social support within work teams. Public Servant Pulse includes an item to measure team cohesion, from the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (2010-2024), and an item to measure belonging, based on work by Walton & Cohen (2007).
Role Conflict
Role conflict is a form of role stress that occurs when employees face incompatible, competing, or unclear expectations associated with their job responsibilities (Kahn et al., 1964). Role conflict arises when fulfilling one set of expectations makes it difficult or impossible to meet others, and it is often linked to stress, dissatisfaction, and reduced job performance. Public Servant Pulse includes two items developed for this survey to assess how and whether public servants experience role conflict.
Red Tape
Red tape refers to excessive, unnecessary, or otherwise constraining rules, procedures, and regulations that individuals may face in their work (Bozeman, 1993). Red tape is often cited as a feature of government work and a challenge for both government workers and those they serve. Public Servant Pulse includes an item on red tape developed for this survey to measure how public servants view the level of red tape in their own work environments.
Pay Expectations
Pay expectations include satisfaction with pay and expectation of pay compared to similar roles in the private sector. Public Servant Pulse includes two items on pay expectations, one developed for this survey and one from the OECD/EU Survey of Public Servants (2024).
Workplace Harassment
Workplace harassment is unwelcome conduct that creates an intimidating, hostile, or abusive work environment. Public Servant Pulse includes an item adapted from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Quality of Worklife Questionnaire (2010) on experiences of workplace harassment.
Supervisor Relationship
Supervisor relationship measures are a key predictor of employee engagement and performance and consider the quality and effectiveness of the working relationship between staff and supervisors. Public Servant Pulse includes one item from the LMX-7 Questionnaire (Hanasono, 2017) on relationships with direct supervisors.
Innovation
Innovation reflects the extent to which employees are able to develop new ideas, improve processes, and respond to changing technology and needs at work. Public Servant Pulse includes two items from the OECD/EU Survey of Public Servants (2024) on how public servants experience opportunities for and barriers to innovation.
Public Service Mindsets
How public servants identify with their work, view the role of government, and perceive the residents they serve links employee experience to resident-government interactions. Public Servant Pulse includes mindset measures to connect direct and indirect employee experiences to the broader picture of what it means to be a public servant in the United States.
These measures, drawn from existing literature and surveys or developed for Public Servant Pulse, also predict outcomes like workplace satisfaction, engagement, burnout, and recruitment and retention in the public sector, but more directly reflect how public servants view their role in government.
Public Sector Identification
Public sector identification reflects employees' perceptions of their own role in public service. Research by Sciepura and Linos (2024) finds that viewing government as the best place to serve is associated with lower psychological distress, including burnout and compassion fatigue. Public Servant Pulse includes one item on public sector identification adapted from Sciepura and Linos (2024).
Recruitment and Retention
Understanding why employees join and stay in the public sector reflects motivation around public service and may help government leaders better understand how motivation changes over time. Public Servant Pulse includes two items, developed for this survey, that ask public servants to reflect on why they joined and why they stay in the public sector.
Burden Tolerance
Burden tolerance is an individual's willingness to accept the imposition of administrative burdens—such as documentation or work requirements—on residents in interactions with the government (e.g., in order to access public services or benefits). Public Servant Pulse includes one item from a burden tolerance scale developed and validated by Baekgaard et al. (2025).
Role of Government
Role of government captures the varied beliefs that public servants may have about what role the government should play in people's lives. Public Servant Pulse includes one item from the World Values Survey measuring employees' perspectives on the overarching role of government.
Trust
Trust in others is often measured across three dimensions—trust in one's integrity, competence, and benevolence (Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman, 1995). Public Servant Pulse includes four questions that measure how and whether public servants trust the residents they are called to serve adapted from Grimmelikhuijsen and Knies (2017) and one adapted from the American National Election Studies.
Data & Results
Coming soon!