The distribution coefficient, kd, of a soil plays a vital role in controlling its interaction with contaminant(s). Studies conducted by earlier researchers, demonstrate that kd is quite sensitive to various attributes of the soil-contaminant system viz, ratio of the contaminant in the liquid form to the solid (soil) form, pH, the cation-exchange capacity; mineralogy and redox potential of the soil, temperature, types of ionic species, and concentration of the contaminant. Hence, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to identify the parameters that have most significant influence on the kd. Such an exercise would be helpful in minimizing the number of batch tests to be conducted for determining the kd of a soil-contaminant system, which otherwise is a very cumbersome task. To achieve this objective, application of the Taguchi method, which primarily helps in designing experiments, appears to be a panacea. With this in view and to demonstrate the potential of this methodology for identification of the dominating factor(s) to which kd is highly sensitive, the Taguchi method was employed (both static and dynamic analyses) for designing batch tests. Subsequently, five parameters-cation-exchange capacity of the soil, contaminant type (ionic species of contaminant), pH of soil-contaminant system, liquid to solid ratio and concentration of the contaminant-were selected and temperature was maintained as a noise parameter. In this paper, kd is demonstrated to be highly sensitive to the concentration of the contaminant, cation-exchange capacity of the soil, and ionic species of the contaminant, in a decreasing order. © 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.