The uncertainties in material, geometrical, environmental and loading conditions of structures result in a certain scatter of structural response. Information on the impact of these phenomena may be gained through sensitivity analysis. Several different approaches have been developed. Because there is a lack of unique definitions and terminology, we will try to fill in the gap with this paper. Both deterministic and stochastic sensitivity analyses are briefly described, the latter being separated into the following alternatives: design point sensitivity factors; omission sensitivity factors; sensitivity in terms of failure probability; sensitivity in terms of coefficients of variation; sensitivity in terms of correlation coefficients; and parametric stochastic sensitivity. These types of sensitivity analyses cannot be directly compared because they are based on different assumptions, but at the end of the paper some numerical examples are presented. Concluding remarks show how to exploit the individual alternatives of sensitivity analysis efficiently.

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