About the Survey

The American Government Employee Survey (AGES) is the largest survey of federal government employees conducted by political scientists and involves multiple research projects from scholars at universities across the U.S.
Each iteration of the survey includes different questions. Click here to learn more about the 2018 AGES. In 2019, the survey focused primarily on obtaining information about how the partial federal government shutdown affected government workers. The 2025 survey will deliver essential data on the immediate and consequential impact of Trump first hundred days of his second term on government employees.

Purpose

The purpose of the survey is to better understand the officials who are "street-level" bureaucrats.

A crucial blind spot exists in our understanding of American politics: the experiences and actions of street-level bureaucrats. Scholarly research has consistently neglected these essential government employees, largely due to the challenge of obtaining reliable quantitative data.


The American Government Employees Survey is designed to rectify this critical omission, placing the vital study of street-level bureaucrats at the center of political science, public policy, and public administration research.

Results​

Publications:
  1. Hollibaugh Jr, Gary E., Matthew R. Miles, and Chad B. Newswander. "Why public employees rebel: Guerrilla government in the public sector." Public Administration Review 80, no. 1 (2020): 64-74. ​*Winner of 2021 William E. Mosher and Frederick C. Mosher Award for the best Public Administration Review article written by an academic
  2. Newswander, Chad B., Matthew R. Miles, and Lynita K. Newswander. "The burden of bad intentions: Analyzing politicized administrative burdens." The American Review of Public Administration 54, no. 6 (2024): 507-517.
  3. Hassell, Hans JG, Gary E. Hollibaugh Jr, and Matthew R. Miles. "Seeking the Public Good: Public Service Motivation and Political Ambition." Political Behavior (2024): 1-25.
  4. Hassell, Hans JG, Gary E. Hollibaugh Jr, and Matthew R. Miles. "Does the Presence or Absence of Elections Remove Gender Differences in Ambition for Public Service?." British Journal of Political Science 55 (2025): e6.
  5. Hassell, Hans JG, Gary E. Hollibaugh,  & Matthew R. Miles.  Not Just Elections: Personality Traits and Ambition for Political Office. Political Behavior (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-025-10024-8 

Principal Investigators

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Gary Hollibaugh
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Matthew R. Miles
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Chad B. Newswander
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Justin Vaughn

2019 Partial Federal Government Shutdown

Immediately after the Federal government re-opened, we recontacted participants from the 2018 survey to quantify how they were affected by the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. More information on this available here.