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This article reviews the psychometric properties of the Stressful Life Events Screening Questionnaire (SLESQ), a recently developed trauma history screening measure, and discusses the complexities involved in assessing trauma exposure. There are relatively few general measures of exposure to a variety of types of traumatic events, and most of those that exist have not been subjected to rigorous psychometric evaluation. The SLESQ showed good test‐retest reliability, with a median kappa of .73, adequate convergent validity (with a lengthier interview) with a median kappa of .64, and good discrimination between Criterion A and non‐Criterion A events. The discussion addresses some of the challenges of assessing traumatic event exposure along the dimensions of defining traumatic events, assessment methodologies, reporting consistency, and incident validation.