Trauma assessment is the bedrock upon which posttraumatic stress research is based, but are we on shaky foundations? Professor Armour will discuss recent research which examines how we measure traumatic life experiences and how lay people in the population think about trauma and what might be traumatizing experiences. Professor Armour will discuss research in which she conducted a content analysis of eight standardized self-report adult life course trauma assessments, concluding that there is a moderate overlap between such assessments within the field. In other words, there is a lack of consistency and specificity in how we measure trauma, which raises important questions within the field. Similarly, Professor Armour will discuss a new study which queried the lay representation of traumas and how ‘traumatizing’ 80 (40 prototypical traumas vs 40 non-prototypical) traumatic experiences were perceived to be by lay people in the UK population. Professor Armour will also discuss whether certain sociodemographics might be predictive of people’s perceptions of the traumatizing nature of events, querying whether judgements deviate across the population. This line of research provides important insights for those who work clinically with people exposed to an array of life adversities that may subsequently impact upon their health and wellbeing. An important reflection is that the objective reality of an event is likely to be much less important on psychological wellbeing outcomes than the subjective interpretation of that experience.