The present work used multivariate calibration by Partial Least Squares (PLS) to produce a Net Analyte Signal as a way of establishing the independent influence of each phase in the Quantitative Phase Analysis with the Rietveld method for three sources of potential error: preferred orientation, linear absorption and counting statistics. Ternary mixtures of Al2O3, MgO and NiO were employed and organized in three groups with different degrees of variation in the weight fractions of the three constituents. An analysis of variance indicated that the partial selectivity of the least variation group differed significantly from the other groups. As for the phases, MgO partial selectivity was significantly different. This is due to a strong correlation between the linear absorption and counting statistics in the region of the (2 0 0) reflection of the MgO phase that is strongly affected by preferred orientation and also corresponds to the strongest reflection for MgO as well as for NiO. On the whole, by using matrices of similarity, a great similarity was observed between the nominal weight fractions of the phases and the weight fractions observed by means of the Rietveld method. However, such similarity diminishes as the weight fractions of the phases of the mixture become closer to each other and, in the group of mixtures with least variation of weight fractions, the method is unable to quantify the small differences between the phases, even if these errors may be considered small relative to the weight fractions themselves. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.