Top ten fears of children in the United States, Australia, China, and Nigeria

Our cavalcade of what children fear continues with a broader survey. In 1996 Thomas H. Ollendick, Bin Yang, Neville J. King, Qi Dong, and Abebowale Akande published an article titled “Fears in American, Australian, Chinese, and Nigerian Children and Adolescents: A Cross-Cultural Study,” in a magazine called The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (V37, pages 213 to 220). You can find an abstract here. They surveyed 300 children in each country, with 50 boys and 50 girls chosen at each of three predetermined age levels (7 to 10, 11 to 13, and 14 to 17).

Ollendick et al used the Fear Survey Schedule for Children - Revised (acronymed as the FSSC-R) which has 80 items. Survey participants respond to each item by marking either None, Some, or A Lot. The most common fears were the ten fears with the highest means at the level of A Lot. Public speaking was covered in Item 1, which is:

“Giving an oral report”

The Top Ten common fears (from the entire pooled sample) were:

1. Not able to breathe
2. Hit by a car or truck
3. Bombing attacks
4. Earthquakes
5. Fire - getting burned
6. Falling from a high place
7. Failing a test
8. Having my parents argue
9. Getting poor grades
10. Death/dead people

A bar chart (shown above, click to enlarge) displays the percent of children reporting each of the common top ten fears (their Table 2). Giving an oral report isn’t there.

For American children, seven of the ten fears in their Top Ten were the same as the common ones:

Not able to breathe
Hit by a car or truck
Bombing attacks
A burglar breaking into our house (replacing Earthquakes)
Fire - getting burned
Falling from a high place
Looking foolish (replacing Failing a test)
Getting lost in a strange place (replacing Having my parents argue)
Getting poor grades
Death/dead people

For Australian children, eight of the ten fears in their Top Ten were the same as the common ones:

Not able to breathe
Hit by a car or truck
Bombing attacks
Earthquakes
Fire - getting burned
Falling from a high place
Failing a test
Having my parents argue
A burglar breaking into our house (replacing Getting poor grades)
Germs/getting a serious illness (replacing Death/dead people)

For Chinese children, seven of the ten fears in their Top Ten were the same as the common ones:

Not able to breathe
Hit by a car or truck
Getting a shock from electricity (replacing Bombing attacks)
Earthquakes
Fire - getting burned
Bears (replacing Falling from a high place)
Failing a test
Having my parents argue
Getting poor grades
Ghosts or spooky things (replacing Death/dead people)

For Nigerian children, six of the ten fears in their Top Ten were the same as the common ones:

Snakes (replacing Not able to breathe)
Hit by a car or truck
Bombing attacks
Earthquakes
Guns (replacing Fire - getting burned)
Falling from a high place
Getting a shock from electricity (replacing Failing a test)
Deep water/ocean (replacing Having my parents argue)
Getting poor grades
Death/dead people

So, for children in all four of these countries, public speaking (giving an oral report) wasn’t even in the top ten - or remotely near being the number one fear typically claimed to occur for American adults.