Why a Questionnaire?
If you have been following us for a while, you know that it is extremely difficult to directly collect data on UAPs. This is largely because of the completely unpredictable and transient nature of the phenomena, and because we struggle to form any informed hypotheses about what we should measure and how. It is important to address this, but progress is slow.
What we do have in abundance is witnesses – witnesses, and what they tell us they remember about their encounters. Although we recognize the serious problems in dealing with eyewitness testimony, we don’t regard such testimonies as “only” anecdotes, but as data – data about what humans – very complex and imperfect perception machines – remember.
One working hypothesis is that what witnesses remember is sometimes strongly correlated with some unidentified phenomenon that they experienced at the time. This leaves the hard work of filtering out the cases of mundane misperception, wishful thinking, and the occasional hoax, to reduce the set of memories that do not admit to straightforward explanation, and are strange enough, and for which we have corroborating evidence. For some time now, API has been doing this and keeping records.
What we haven’t been doing systematically, though, is trying to learn more about our witnesses. What kind of people are they? Are they much different from the general population, and if so, how? What kind of life experiences have they had, and what do they believe in? The only way we have at present to assess this is to ask them. Hence, a questionnaire. An online form that can be filled out anonymously and in private can permit us to probe for adverse experiences and deep beliefs.
No questionnaire is perfect, and not all answers will be honest, but it will be more information that we have had before about who is reporting to us.
How You Can Help
We would like to know what you think. Please go over to the questionnaire (it’s a Google Form):
https://goo.gl/forms/0gEG9K6y0sz336D03
and enter 19-999 as your case number. Then, go through the five sections as honestly as possible, and hit “submit” at the end. The questionnaire is anonymous. There is a place in Section 5 where you can tell us what you think, or you can comment on this post. Are we missing important questions or optional answers to the questions? Did any of the questions make you feel uncomfortable? We’d like to know.