What is our government sweeping under the rug? Paranoia in the 2017 Chapman Survey of American Fears

In the 2017 Chapman Survey of American Fears the most common fear was Corrupt Federal Government Officials. This year’s survey also included eight questions about the government hiding things.

The general question was: “The government is concealing what it knows about...” and eight specific questions were about:

Alien encounters (q28a)

The 9/11 attacks (q28b)

The South Dakota crash (q28c)

Global warming (q28d)

The JFK assassination (q28e)

The moon landing (q28f)

Collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials (q28g)

The Illuminati/New World Order (q28h)

For each question people were asked how they felt about that event. That is, whether they:

Strongly Disagree

Disagree

Agree

Strongly Agree

There also was a Blank category of Refused for those who did not reply to a question. Results for the sum of Agree and Strongly Agree were:

56.1% Global warming

55.7% The JFK assassination

55.0% Collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials

46.7% The 9/11 attacks

39.9% Alien encounters

39.0% The Illuminati/New World Order

27.7% The South Dakota crash

25.2% The moon landing

In the 2016 survey the very similar general question was: “The government is concealing what they know about...” and ten specific questions were about:

Alien encounters Q32_1

The 9/11 attacks Q32_2

The North Dakota crash Q32_3

Obama’s birth certificate Q32_4

Global warming Q32_5

The JFK assassination Q32_6

The moon landing Q32_7

The death of Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia Q32_8

The origins of the AIDS virus Q32_9

Plans for a one world government Q32_10

I blogged about it on October 15, 2016 in a post titled What is the government concealing from us? Paranoia in the 2016 Chapman Survey of American Fears.

Results for the sum of Agree and Strongly Agree were:

52.4% The 9/11 attacks Q32_2

47.9% The JFK assassination Q32_6

40.8 Alien encounters Q32_1

40.3% Global warming Q32_5

31.5% Plans for a one world government Q32_10

30.6% The North Dakota crash Q32_3

28.9% Obama’s birth certificate Q32_4

28.8% The origins of the AIDS virus Q32_9

26.7% The death of Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia Q32_8

23.2% The moon landing Q32_7

From 2016 to 2017 the sum for global warming went up by 15.8%, and that for the JFK assassination by 7.8%. But the sum for the 9/11 attacks went down by 5.7%. The South and North Dakota crashes were meant to be made-up events, but their vague descriptions didn’t work and about 3 of 10 folks thought they referred to real events.

Very curiously Chapman University also swept the results for their 2017 survey under the rug. The Acrobat .pdf file linked to under Methodology Report shrank from 99 pages to 31 pages. The bottom line on the second page which said that Weighted Data Frequencies would be found on page 31 was erased.