5,304 rated or chosen profiles from 885 respondents, in up to 3 tasks of 2 profiles varying on 6 attributes.

About this table

Description	US job seekers (n = 885) compared pairs of hypothetical state-government jobs (3 pairs each) described by governing party, elite polarization, salary, workforce size, location and a backsliding or other state-government action; they chose the preferred job and rated each job 1-7.
Reference	Miller, S. M., & Gilad, S. (2026). Democratic backsliding, elite polarization, and job seekers' pursuit of government employment. Regulation & Governance.
DOI	10.1111/rego.70138
Licence	CC0 1.0
Source data	https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/KCEBF9

Notes

Conjoint table (irw_conjoint_2). Three pairs of hypothetical state-government jobs per respondent, six attributes; choice = preferred job (no opt-out, one per pair), rating = 1-7 rating of each job (direction undocumented, presumably higher = more attractive). Task and profile are inferred from the state_gov index (verified: one preferred per pair); wording is a paraphrase since no codebook is deposited; 3 pairs with missing choice dropped.

These notes describe the source data, which the IRW reproduces as released. All notes are listed on the Data Notes page.

Size and shape

Respondents	885
Rows (one per respondent, task and profile)	5,304
Tasks per respondent (most)	3
Profiles per task	2
Attributes	6
Tasks with no profile chosen	0

Design

Topic	labour hiring, democracy institutions
A profile represents	product service
Country	US
Language shown	en
Language of stored levels	en
Randomization restrictions	unknown
Task order	inferred from row order
Profile position	inferred from row order

Task order or profile position was rebuilt from row order; analyses of position or task order should leave it out.

Outcomes:

choice	Which of the two state-government jobs do you prefer? (paraphrase) [choice, forced]
rating	How attractive is working for this state government? (paraphrase) [rating, 1 (unknown) to 7 (unknown)]

Columns

attr_backslidingattr_government_partyattr_job_locationattr_polarizationattr_salaryattr_workforcechoicecov_party_ididprofileratingtask

The layout (one row per respondent, task and profile; choice/rating outcomes; attr_ columns holding each attribute level as displayed) is defined in the IRW conjoint standard. What the outcomes asked is under Design above.

Get the data

Download CSVno account needed Browse on Redivisexplore and query Croissant metadataHugging Face, Kaggle, OpenML

Or load it directly in R or Python (both need a free Redivis account; the first call opens a browser to sign in):

# R
install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("itemresponsewarehouse/Rpkg")
library(irw)
df <- irw_fetch("miller_2026_backsliding_jobs", source = "conj")

# Python
pip install irw

import irw
df = irw.fetch("miller_2026_backsliding_jobs", source="conj")

How to cite

@article{Miller_2026, title={Democratic Backsliding, Elite Polarization, and Job Seekers’ Pursuit of Government Employment}, ISSN={1748-5991}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/rego.70138}, DOI={10.1111/rego.70138}, journal={Regulation &amp; Governance}, publisher={Wiley}, author={Miller, Susan M. and Gilad, Sharon}, year={2026}, month=Mar }

Version and provenance

IRW version	v584
Redivis dataset	irw_conjoint_2 v1.4
Redivis dataset DOI	10.57761/hk97-wv30
Manifest pin for this IRW version	v1.4
Metadata source	irw_meta v44.0