How Dangerous Is This, Really? A Guide to Danger Assessment Tools

You don't have to rely only on gut feeling to gauge how serious a relationship has become. A number of free, research-backed tools exist to help you see the pattern more clearly. Have you ever tried to explain a relationship to a friend and heard yourself say "but it's not that bad" mid-sentence, even while describing something that clearly unsettled you? Minimizing is one of the most common and most human responses to abuse. It's also one of the reasons danger can be hard to see clearly from the inside. You're not just evaluating a set of facts, you're evaluating them from inside a relationship you may still love, still hope will change, or still feel afraid to name honestly, even to yourself.

This is exactly the gap that structured assessment tools were built to close. They don't replace your own judgment. What they do is take the pattern out of your head, where fear, love, and hope can all distort the picture, and put it into a format built from research on thousands of other relationships. Below is an overview of the major tools currently available, what each one is actually for, and who tends to use them.

A checklist can't tell you what to do. But it can tell you whether what you're experiencing matches a pattern that, in other cases, escalated.

Tools built to gauge your own risk

Self-assessment

The Danger Assessment

Developed to estimate the risk of being killed by an intimate partner, this tool has two parts: a calendar where you map out the frequency and severity of abusive incidents over the past year, and a 20-item weighted questionnaire covering known risk factors for intimate partner homicide. The calendar component does double duty. It's not just data collection, it's often the first time a survivor sees the full pattern laid out chronologically, which tends to counter the minimizing and denial that abuse can quietly train into you over time. It's available in multiple languages, with a separate version designed specifically for immigrant women, whose risk factors and barriers to leaving can differ significantly.

Self-assessment

MOSAIC

This tool works by comparing your situation, question by question, against a large body of other cases to see how closely it resembles ones that escalated. After you create a confidential account and answer a series of weighted questions, you receive an immediate report rating your situation on a 1-to-10 scale. It's worth knowing that this same threat-assessment methodology is used well beyond domestic violence, including by U.S. Supreme Court police and Capitol Police to evaluate threats against public officials. Its most common use today, however, is exactly this: helping an individual understand where their own relationship falls on a risk spectrum.

Self-assessment

SHARP (Stalking and Harassment Assessment and Risk Profile)

A 15-minute, free, confidential online assessment built specifically for stalking situations, which can be harder to name and take seriously than physical violence, especially when it involves an ex-partner rather than a current one. Within about a minute of finishing, you get a written summary of your situation along with concrete safety steps to consider. It was developed with input from attorneys, victim advocates, prosecutors, and law enforcement, alongside organizations focused specifically on stalking, so it's built to reflect how stalking is actually defined and prosecuted, not just how it feels.

Self-assessment

SOS Conjugale Interactive Questionnaire

A 25-question tool designed to help you identify whether different forms of intimate partner violence, not just physical, are present in a current or past relationship. It was built with a specific and useful goal: to help you look at your own situation more objectively, put language to an experience that may have felt formless, and create enough distance to actually take stock. Originally created for people in Quebec, it's available in English and French and is useful regardless of where you live.

Self-assessment

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Quiz

This one looks backward rather than forward. Developed originally by the CDC and Kaiser Permanente in the mid-1990s, it tallies different categories of childhood abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction. The underlying research found a strong relationship between a higher ACE count and greater long-term risk across health, behavior, and life opportunity. It's included here because many survivors find that understanding their own history helps explain patterns in adult relationships, including why certain warning signs were harder to recognize or easier to accept.

Tools built for advocates and professionals

A few tools in this space are designed to be administered by a trained professional rather than completed alone. It's still worth knowing they exist, both so you understand what a good advocate, officer, or clinician might be doing when they ask you a structured set of questions, and because they represent decades of research you can benefit from indirectly.

Professional use

The Lethality Assessment Program (LAP)

Built on research from Dr. Jacquelyn Campbell at Johns Hopkins University, the LAP is an 11-question protocol used by first responders and domestic violence advocates to gauge how much immediate danger a survivor is in, followed directly by a process for connecting that person with resources. The CDC has identified it as a supported intervention, and the federal Office on Violence Against Women considers it a leading practice. If a police officer or advocate ever walks you through a short series of pointed questions after an incident, this may well be the tool behind it.

Professional use

Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment (ODARA)

An actuarial tool used by professionals to estimate how likely a man who has already assaulted a female partner is to do so again. It scores 13 factors and produces a percentage-based likelihood of a future assault coming to police attention. This tool is about the perpetrator's risk profile rather than the survivor's day-to-day experience, which makes it a useful piece of context if you're weighing decisions like a protective order or custody arrangement, where a professional's risk assessment of him may become part of the record.

A different kind of tool: understanding compensation

Separate from the risk and danger assessments above, it's worth knowing that a tool called Compensation Compass exists to help survivors understand what financial recovery options may be available to them for the harm they experienced. It works by asking a short set of questions about your priorities, then surfacing a personalized list of compensation avenues worth exploring, which can include victim compensation funds, restitution, and in some cases, the civil lawsuit route covered in our companion piece on suing an abuser for damages.

How to actually use one of these

• Pick one that matches your situation. If stalking or an ex-partner's ongoing contact is the primary concern, SHARP is more targeted than a general tool. If you're trying to understand overall lethality risk, the Danger Assessment is the most extensively researched option.

• Do it somewhere private and safe. If your device or internet activity is monitored, consider using a computer at a library, a trusted friend's device, or clearing your browser history afterward. An advocate can help you think through digital safety before you begin.

• Take the result seriously, in either direction. A high score is not a verdict on your relationship or a demand that you leave immediately, it's information. A lower score doesn't mean your fear is unfounded, either. These tools measure known statistical patterns, not the full complexity of your life.

• Bring the result to an advocate. A completed assessment gives a domestic violence advocate a much faster, clearer starting point than describing everything from memory in a first conversation.
  

Before you take an assessment

If you're currently in a situation where a partner monitors your phone, computer, or accounts, please take extra care with digital safety first. Consider using a device your partner cannot access, and know that many browsers keep a history that can be reviewed later. If you're in immediate danger, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or text "START" to 88788, both of which can also help you think through safe ways to use tools like these.

None of these tools can tell you what your relationship means, or what you should do next. What they can do is take a pattern that may feel confusing, self-blaming, or hard to hold onto, and give it a shape built from research on people in similar situations. Sometimes having that shape, on its own, is what makes it possible to finally trust what you already knew.

This article is for educational purposes and describes publicly available assessment resources. It is not a substitute for professional risk assessment, therapy, or legal advice. If you are in immediate danger, please contact local emergency services or the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.

Adapted from "Domestic Violence Assessment Tools," DomesticShelters.org. Tool descriptions reference the Danger Assessment, MOSAIC, the ACE Quiz (CDC/Kaiser Permanente), the Lethality Assessment Program (Dr. Jacquelyn Campbell, Johns Hopkins University, via the Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence), ODARA, SHARP, SOS Conjugale, and Compensation Compass.