Research on the short- and long-term effects of traumatic stress and disasters involving the study of victims and control Ss after the events have happened are problematic for several reasons: difficulty specifying baseline adjustment, necessary reliance on retrospective and sometimes monomethod data, difficulties in recruiting representative samples of victims, and convincing control groups. Many of these problems could be circumvented by the use of ongoing longitudinal and multimeasure studies of psychosocial development. Problems involved in implementing such collaborative research ventures are reviewed, and solutions are proposed.