General information
Conducted in 2019 and 2025, the SEAQ collects data on abusive situations experienced by seniors living at home.
It aims to assess the extent of four types of abuse in their “violent” form, namely psychological, physical, sexual, and material/financial abuse, as well as physical abuse in its “neglectful” form, in addition to measuring the overall extent of these types of abuse.
The SEAQ allows us to:
- Measure the extent of abuse by gender and age
- Describe the characteristics of mistreated seniors
- Briefly describe the perpetrators and their relationship to the mistreated senior
- Describe the actions taken by mistreated seniors when they experienced abusive situations
- Describe the co-occurrence between the types of abuse
Type of survey
Cross-sectional survey with provincial representativeness
Target population
All persons aged 65 and over residing in Québec in private or collective non-institutional dwellings. This includes private seniors’ residences (with or without services), intermediate resources, and family-type resources.
Persons living in the health regions of Nunavik and Terres-Cries-de-la-Baie-James and those living in institutional collective dwellings (hospitals, residential and long-term care centres, senior homes, etc.) are not covered by the survey. Persons unable to answer the survey for themselves by telephone or online due to health or language-related issues are also excluded.
Sampling and data collection
Sample
2025: 24,893 people
2019: 14,486 people
Data collection period
2025: February 3 to September 2, 2025
2019: February 21 to June 9, 2019
Collection method
2025: Online or telephone
2019: Telephone
Response rates
2025: 61.1%
2019: 73.8%
Themes or topics
Overall abuse, physical neglect, material/financial abuse, psychological abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, history of abuse, factors associated with abuse, characteristics of perpetrators, actions taken by mistreated persons following the situations experienced.
Methodological and technical information
2025
2019
Additional information
The microdata files for SEAQ 2019 are available at the Institut de la statistique du Québec’s Research Data Access Centre (CADRISQ).
The microdata files for SEAQ 2025 will be made available in the fall of 2026.
