Employee engagement using the federal employee viewpoint survey

To determine the consistency of the practice-oriented Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey–Employee Engagement Index (FEVS-EEI) with growing academic consensus around engagement as a motivational state, we examined the fit of the FEVS-EEI within two major theoretical frameworks relative to an academically derived engagement scale. Using a government sample (n = 241,465), we first examined the factor structure of the FEVS-EEI (Leaders Lead, Intrinsic Work Experience, Supervisors). Using a second field sample (n = 206), our results from dominance and relative weights analyses showed that only one factor of the instrument significantly predicted worker engagement as assessed using a scale validated for measuring engagement and not antecedents of engagement. With the same field sample, we used structural equation modeling to examine the fit of the practice-oriented FEVS-EEI to science-oriented theoretical frameworks of engagement and found the FEVS-EEI acts like an indicator of job resources, which itself is a predictor of engagement.