The goals included in each of the two surveys, the first on Government's Greatest Achievements of the Past Half Century and the second on Governments Greatest Priorities of the Next Half Century, were selected through a winnowing process designed to group major foreign and domestic laws into broad public policy goals that can be said to have earned the federal government's greatest effort.

This winnowing process began with a list of major statutes identified through a careful reading of the Congressional Quarterly Almanacs from 1945 to 1998 and Congressional Quarterly Weekly editions for more recent years. The resulting list of more than 500 separate laws was validated and, when necessary, augmented with the list of important congressional enactments included in David R. Mayhew's Divided We Govern. Mayhew's list was developed through a two-stage process that included year-end legislative summaries described by major newspapers, including the New York Times and The Washington Post, and retrospective analyses found in books by policy specialists on specific topics.

Once collected and validated, each of the 500 laws was grouped with other legislation sharing a main public policy goal. As a result, some of the goals reflect a relatively small number of major laws such as Medicare, while others reflect an accumulation of major initiatives over the years. The result was a set of 66 major policy goals that had earned significant federal attention over the past 50 years. For the survey on Government's Greatest Achievements of the Past Half Century, these 66 goals were further winnowed to a final list of the top 50 federal efforts.