How governments are included in GovFeeds

How the sample started

GovFeeds began with a random sample of about 5,000 U.S. counties and municipalities, drawn with probability weighted by population. Drawing at random spread the sample across the whole country, and weighting by population means the governments that serve most residents are well represented.

How it has grown

Since then, governments have also been added based on subscribers’ needs: their own jurisdictions, their neighbors, and the peers they compare themselves with. As new governments are regularly added, we follow the same random sampling approach as the original sample, weighted by population.

What this means for research

The data is roughly representative of U.S. local governments by population and covers all 50 states. Because the original draw was weighted by population, larger governments are more likely to be included than smaller ones, and coverage varies from state to state. For estimates about all local governments, weight or post-stratify by government type and size. We can provide the list of included governments with their Census IDs to support this.

Which accounts are included

For each government, we include its official social media accounts: the main account and those of its departments, such as police, fire, parks and recreation, and the library. An account is included only when the government’s own website links to it and the account’s own name identifies that government or one of its departments. Accounts run by separate organizations, such as school districts, chambers of commerce, special districts and community groups, are left out.

Identifiers

Every government is matched to its ID in the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 Census of Governments, so the data joins cleanly to Census and other public datasets.

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