Although the vast majority of the 528 undergraduate and community participants reported exposure to trauma, they rated questions about their trauma history as neutral on average compared to other experiences in their daily lives. Further, participants rated the importance of the research significantly higher than the distress they experienced from their participation. They also gave high ratings to the importance of including trauma questions in the research. Although cultural taboos suggest that asking about trauma may be upsetting for survivors of abuse and interpersonal violence, this study did not find evidence of this for survivors in this sample. A total of 468 students (73.5 percent were female) from the University of Denver and the University of Oregon participated in the study, along with 149 community participants (64 percent were female). Participants were asked whether the trauma-history questions were more or less distressing than things encountered in daily life, how important it was for psychologists to ask about these events, and whether including trauma measures in psychology research was a good idea. 2 tables and 17 references