Public administration research is becoming increasingly quantitative. As seen in psychological and managerial research, the result is a growing demand for valid and reliable measures. Given the tradition of contextually embedded research in public administrationwhere research should cover multiple factors to find useful answers to real-life problemssurvey research should ideally incorporate many measures. This is driving a need for short measures that do not compromise on validity and reliability. In this study, a short measure of general policy alienation is developed and tested, observing stringent criteria. The analyses on three independent datasets (N = 1,183, N = 354, and N = 933) show that the original multidimensional 26-item measure can be abbreviated to a short five-item measure with limited compromises on validity and reliability. Practical applications and methodological implications regarding both the developed measure and the 10-step procedure used are discussed.