A blog post last week used stale results from a 2014 survey instead of those from 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the Psyblog by Jeremy Dean there is a post on January 18, 2023 titled The Top 5 Personal Fears in America. He reports results from the 2014 Chapman Survey of American Fears.  Jeremy says #1 is Walking alone at night, #2 is Becoming the victim of identity theft, #3 is Safety on the internet, #4 is Being the victim of a mass/random shooting, and #5 is Public speaking.

 

But that was the first of a series of eight Chapman surveys done in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020-21, and 2022. Why didn’t he instead report results from their latest 2022 survey?

 

And, how different are those 2014 Top Five from the latest done in 2022? Walking alone at night dropped from #1 to #72, Becoming the victim of identity theft fell from #2 to #21, Safety on the internet fell from #3 (it was replaced by Cyber-terrorism) to #12, Being the victim of a mass/random shooting dropped from #4 to #32, and Public speaking dropped from #5 to #46. None of that Top Five from 2014 even made it into the Top Ten in 2022.

 

One reason for the differences was that questions in the 2014 survey were asked in several different ways, I blogged about that in a post on October 27, 2014 titled What do the most Americans fear? The Chapman Survey on American Fears and the press release copying reflex. That problem was corrected in their 2015 and later surveys.