A peculiarly limited analysis of how religion affects fears reported in a 2018 U. S. survey

On March 18 there was a post by Ryan P. Burge at the Religion in Public blog titled Does religion impact what people are afraid of?

His second paragraph says:

“The Chapman Survey of American Fears was published recently on the Association of Religion Data Archives. It was a survey of just over a thousand people per year from 2014 to 2018. It’s unique because it asks about fear in a staggering number of scenarios. For instance, in the 2018 wave, it asks how fearful respondents are of fifty-three different things. This battery included threats like nuclear attack, needles, flying, an economic collapse, and yes – even a pandemic. It also included a host of questions about religious belief, behavior, and belonging that helps us understand how religion mitigates or exacerbates feelings of fear.”

Ryan’s blog post displays a bar chart titled Fear Based on Religious Affiliation with the percentage of Catholics, Protestants, or Nones who said they were Afraid or Very Afraid of each of those 53 things. But, when you look at the Chapman blog post from October 16, 2018 titled America’s Top Fears 2018 you will find that 94 are listed – not just 53. Ryan only showed 56% of the survey questions! None of the Top 10 Fears included by the Chapman blog post are Ryan’s bar chart. The first three are #11 Cyber-terrorism, #12 The U.S. will be involved in another world war, and #15 Economic/financial collapse. Only 6 of their Top 20 are in his bar chart, and just 21 of the Top 50. (There really also is a 95th fear, which I mentioned in my October 19, 2018 blog post titled You probably won’t hear public speaking coaches discuss the 2018 Chapman Survey of American Fears).

Ryan’s fourth paragraph begins by asking what Americans fear the most, although his chart really answers a second different question – what do the most Americans fear. The first sentence in his sixth paragraph similarly says:

“Beyond this, the data paint a clear picture -Catholics are more afraid in almost every scenario compared to Protestants or the religiously unaffiliated.”

It is possible to calculate Fear Scores to really answer the first question. Back on October 30, 2015 I blogged about how According to the 2015 Chapman Survey of American Fears, adults are less than Afraid of federal Government Corruption and only Slightly Afraid of Public Speaking.

I found three other articles and blog posts which referred to Ryan’s blog post. On March 18, 2020 Hemant Mehta in Friendly Atheist at Patheos had an article titled Survey finds religious Americans are more afraid of everything. On March 23, 2020 at Psychology Today Phil Zuckerman blogged about Living in Fear? And on March 26, 2020 in the Godzooks blog at Patheos Rick Snedeker had a post titled Survey: Americans mostly unafraid, but Catholics seem a bit jumpy. None of these three caught that Ryan had only analyzed 53 of those 94 (or 95) fears.