An in situ procedure for calibrating equivalent magnetic area and rotation radius of rotating coils is proposed for testing accelerator magnets shorter than the measuring coil. The procedure exploits measurements of magnetic field and mechanical displacement inside a reference quadrupole magnet. In a quadrupole field, an offset between the magnet and coil rotation axes gives rise to a dipole component in the field series expansion. The measurements of the focusing strength, the displacement, and the resulting dipole term allow the equivalent area and radius of the coil to be determined analytically. The procedure improves the accuracy of coils with large geometrical irregularities in the winding. This is essential for short magnets where the coil dimensions constrain the measurement accuracy. Experimental results on different coils measuring small-aperture permanent magnets are shown.