Guardian Angels are a belief the 2017 Chapman Survey of American Fears blog post on Paranormal America wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole

The 2017 Chapman Survey of American Fears included eight questions about Paranormal Beliefs, which were originally shown on pages 74 to 76 of the 99-page detailed results file titled Methodology Report (which now is censored to just 31 pages).

The general question was: “Please indicate your level of agreement with the following statements” and those eight statements were:

Aliens visited Earth in our ancient past q27a.

Aliens have come to Earth in modern times q27b.

Fortune tellers, and psychics can foresee the future q27c.

Places can be haunted by spirits q27d.

Bigfoot is a real creature q27e.

I have been protected by a guardian angel q27f.

Ancient advanced civilizations, such as Atlantis, once existed q27g.

Some people can move objects with their minds q27h.

For each question people were to answer with one of the following five levels:

Blank (no answer given)

Strongly Agree

Agree

Disagree

Strongly Disagree

Results were reported on October 11, 2017 in a blog post titled Paranormal America 2017. It included a vertical bar chart showing the sum of percentages for Agree and Strongly Agree for seven statements, which were:

        (55.5%) OMITTED [I have been protected by a guardian angel.]

55% (54.5%) Ancient advanced civilizations, such as Atlantis, once existed.

52% (52.0%) Places can be haunted by spirits.

35% (34.8%) Aliens have visited Earth in our ancient past.

26% (26.0%) Aliens have come to Earth in modern times.

25% (24.9%) Some people can move objects with their minds.

19% (19.3%) Fortune tellers, and psychics can foresee the future.

16% (16.1%) Bigfoot is a real creature.

I have shown (in parentheses) the percentages stated to the original tenth of a percent rather than rounded to the nearest percent. The Chapman blog post omitted the sixth one, q27f I have been protected by a guardian angel, which was ranked a percent higher than the highest one they showed.

Why might that be? Chapman University is a church-related school. I suspect they decided that a religion-related question was a topic they didn’t want to touch with a ten-foot pole - because of justifiable paranoia that they might upset either university or church leaders.

That’s nothing new. Last year they didn’t report results on the Guardian Angels question, or another about how Satan causes most evil in the world. See my October 16, 2016 blog post, Guardian Angels and Satan are paranormal beliefs the 2016 Chapman Survey of American Fears wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole.  

The image of a logger holding a long pole was adapted from one found at the Library of Congress.