Instrument details

Instrument Title

NorAQ: NorVold Abuse Questionnaire

Source Article

Swahnberg, I. K., & Wijma, B. (2003). The NorVold Abuse Questionnaire (NorAQ) Validation of new measures of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, and abuse in the health care system among women. The European Journal of Public Health, 13(4), 361-366.

Response Options

Likert scale from 0 = no suffering, to 10 = suffering terribly
Yes/No responses

Survey Items

Emotional abuse:

(Mild) Have you experienced anybody systematically and for any longer period trying to repress, degrade, or humiliate you?
(Moderate) Have you experienced anybody systematically and by threat to force trying to limit your contact with others or totally control what you may or may not do?
(Severe) Have you experienced living in fear because somebody systematically and for a longer period has threatened you or somebody close to you?

Physical abuse:

(Mild) Have you experienced anybody hitting you, smacking your face or holding you firmly against your will?
(Moderate) Have you experienced anybody hitting you with his/her fist(s) or with a hard object, kicking you, pushing you violently, giving you a beating, thrashing you or doing anything similar to you?
(Severe) Have you experienced anybody threatening your life by, for instance, trying to strangle you, showing a weapon or knife or by any other similar act?

Sexual abuse:

(Mild abuse, no genital contact) Has anybody against your will touched parts of your body other than the genitals in a ‘sexual way’ or forced you to touch other parts of his or her body in a ‘sexual way’?
(Mild abuse, emotional/sexual humiliation) Have you in any other way been sexually humiliated; e.g. by being forced to watch a porno movie or similar against your will, forced to participate in a porno movie or similar, forced to show your body naked or forced to watch when somebody else showed his/her body naked?
(Moderate abuse, genital contact) Has anybody against your will touched your genitals, used your body to satisfy him/herself sexually or forced you to touch anybody else’s genitals?
(Severe abuse, penetration) Has anybody against your will put his penis into your vagina, mouth, or rectum or tried to put an object or other part of the body into your vagina, mouth or rectum?

Abuse in the Healthcare System:

(Mild) Have you ever felt offended or grossly degraded while visiting health services, felt that someone exercised blackmail against you or did not show respect for your opinion – in such a way that you were later disturbed by or suffered from the experience?
(Moderate) Have you ever experienced that a ‘normal’ event, while visiting health services suddenly became a really terrible and insulting experience, without you fully knowing how this could happen?
(Severe) Have you experienced anybody in health service purposely – as you understood – hurting you physically or mentally, grossly violating you or using your body to your disadvantage for his/her own purpose?

Internal Reliability

Test-retest reliability (kappa): Emotional abuse: Mild: 0.63, Moderate: 0.57, Severe: 0.74. Physical abuse: Mild: 0.81, Moderate: 0.86, Severe: 0.56. Sexual abuse: Mild: 0.72, Moderate: 0.77, Severe: 0.48. Abuse in healthcare system: Mild: 0.69, Moderate: 0.54, Severe: 0.31.

Validity

Concurrent Validity, Convergent Validity

Google Scholar

View article on Google Scholar

Terms Of Use

Individuals may use this information for research or educational purposes only and may not use this information for commercial purposes. When using this instrument, please cite:

When presenting results using any survey information you obtained from the SABI, please acknowledge the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Center for AIDS Research (CFAR), an NIH funded program P30 AI50410.