•Hearing voices has been related to mental disorders and abnormal behaviour. Several studies in the US, and Europe have however shown that people in the general population also hear voices.
•These studies give reason to believe that the majority of individuals in the general population who hear voices are not in need of mental health care.
•Decreasing prejudice and taboos related to hearing voices seems to be important for both those in need of mental health care and those who manage without. There has been little focus on this in Norway. In addition, it is of theoretical interest whether individuals hearing voices in the general population share behavioural and/or neurocognitive characteristics with patients experiencing auditory hallucinations.
•Previous studies on the prevalence of hearing voices in the general population vary with regard to how frequent such experiences are. Tien, 1991; Barrett & Etheridge, 1992 suggest that 2-4% of the general adult population have such experiences.
•The variations are also related to different definitions of hearing voices, and methodological differences; e.g data collection, measurements, and populations
•First study of its kind in Scandinavia