The centered organization survey methodology

Introduction

Political polarization is on the rise around the globe, with a growing us versus them mentality easily triggered by world events, like the US election. This global challenge has increasingly infiltrated the workplace, affecting how employees connect, collaborate, trust, and engage with both their work and each other. More importantly, this polarization is costly for organizations everywhere.

Little scientific research on the impact of polarization in the workplace has been conducted to date. To fill this gap, BetterUp Labs conducted a comprehensive study to measure the effect of political tension on workplace performance and examine the best practices for maintaining focus and cohesion.

Drawing on data from over 250,000 BetterUp Members and two external pulse surveys—quick surveys aimed at capturing real-time insights—this report highlights the financial and cultural impact of political tension at work and offers guidance on how organizations, managers, and individuals can reduce its negative effects.

Below, we’ve outlined a detailed explanation of how data was gathered, analyzed, and synthesized. 

Overview

The results included in BetterUp’s Centered Organization Report were drawn from three independent research streams collected via two sources: 1) the BetterUp internal member database, and 2) two different survey streams administered via online survey platform. The specifics of each data collection process are outlined below. 

BetterUp internal member database 

Analyses exploring historical trends in well-being and performance relative to disruptions like political elections were based on BetterUp Member assessment data collected between November 17, 2016 and August 21, 2024. As we were most interested in tracking the impact of US elections, only members based in the United States were included in the final sample (n = 275,264).

Our trend analyses focused on national US elections, including the 2020 presidential election (November 3, 2020), the 2022 midterm election (November 8, 2022), and the upcoming 2024 presidential election on November 5, 2024. To quantitatively compare the effect of the elections on our members, we assigned the treatment condition to be the week before each election (with the exception of the 2024 upcoming election, which had not yet taken place at the time of analysis). In addition, we defined three control conditions for comparison: a) the week following each election, b) the week preceding and following our chosen election days in off years (early November in 2019, 2021, and 2023), and c) a year-wide average, which included all dates within a calendar year except the weeks before and after election days.

Given the topic of our research questions, we focused our analyses on member scores in three areas: stress management (“I experience a great deal of tension in my daily life.”; “I have been "on edge" lately.”; “I feel stressed out.” [1-5 scale: ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’; reverse-coded]), productivity (“With 0 as not at all productive and 10 as full productivity, how productive have you been at work recently?”), and member well-being (Compared to how I usually feel, my current well-being is…” [1-5 scale: ‘much worse’ to ‘much better’]).

To reach final values for the constructs of interest, we first detrended the data by subtracting out the average of each year, the average day-of-week, and day-of-year to account for seasonal trends.

External survey data

In addition to probing historic internal member data, BetterUp Labs conducted two concurrent research streams via the online survey platform Prolific between June 2024 and November 2024. The first of these research streams included five longer, independent, topical surveys timed to follow major events in the 2024 election season; the second research stream included shorter and more frequent pulse surveys administered to the same group of participants over time. 

Both research streams consisted of a sample of US-based full-time employees, nationally-representative of gender and political affiliation, selected as such via Prolific. Respondents were aware of their ability to exit the survey at any time, and were financially compensated upon the completion of the survey. Lastly, individuals were prohibited from participating in more than one survey stream.

Survey stream one

As of October 4, 2024, survey stream one collected data from 2,465 US-based respondents by way of five between-subjects surveys. For each survey, respondents who were not employed full-time, were self-employed, took less than five minutes to complete the survey, or failed a basic attention check were excluded from final datasets, bringing the final participant count to 2,164 respondents (see Table 1).

The goal of the independent, periodic surveys in survey stream one was to investigate the evolving impact of political events on workplace atmosphere and to gauge population-wide trends in interpersonal dynamics as the election season progressed. Each of these surveys was timed to capture the impact of, and response to, major events in the 2024 Presidential Election Cycle, with plans to run at least one more survey planned following the Vice-Presidential Debate. 

Table 1. Survey Stream 1 Schedule and participant details.

Survey stream two

As of October 4, 2024, survey stream two includes data from 1,516 sessions collected over two time points (September 5, 2024 & September 23, 2024). This research stream followed a group of individuals over time, with the goal of surveying them on a bi-weekly basis from September 2024 through November 2024. All participants in this research pool were US-based and employed full-time. Respondents were able to exit the survey at any time. For each survey, data from individuals who were not employed full-time, were self-employed, did not complete the full survey, or failed an attention check was excluded from analysis (see Table 2).

Table 2. Survey stream two schedule and participant details

The goal of the shorter, repeated-measures surveys within the same group of individuals in survey stream two was to track the fluctuating impact of political events on individual attitudes, well-being, workplace experiences and professional dynamics as the election season unfolded. Accordingly, some of the survey items were included in all surveys, for tracking purposes, while others were swapped out on a survey-by-survey basis. Amongst the items included in all survey stream two surveys were those highlighted on our Connected Organization Barometer (see Table 3 for details).

Table 3. Centered Organization barometer item details

Go deeper

Looking to learn more about the scientific research BetterUp Labs conducts? View all studies here.