question: Summary The authors have tested 118 stools by five techniques used for the detection of rotaviruses in human faeces : electron microscopy, latex agglutination (Slidex Rota-kit : BioMérieux ; Rotalex : Orion Diagnostica) and ELISA (Enzygnost : Behring ; Bio-Enza-Bead : Bionetics). Reproducibility and specificity for all techniques were satisfactory. Comparison of the methods showed Enzygnost to be the most sensitive (89 %), followed by the two agglutination tests, then electron microscopy and least sensitive the Bio-Enza-Bead (56 %). For large — scale screening of faeces, it appeared that the latex agglutination test were preferable for reasons of simplicity, speed and cost.