This paper presents a strategy to be used for the calibration of adhesion models using a modified extended Kalman filter algorithm. A constitutive model coupling unilateral contact, adhesion and damage is considered for the analysis. The effect of the uncertainties in the constitutive adhesion parameters onto the adhesion reaction force is performed considering four uncertain scenarios. Furthermore, the effect of the speed in the loading-unloading of the system is also taken into account for these analyses. The parameter estimation strategy is assessed considering noise-corrupted synthetic data, two loading profiles and two possible measurement scenarios. The results indicate the key-role played by the sensitivity analysis when estimating the constitutive adhesion parameters and highlights the low sensitivity of system responses with respect to the viscous parameter when compared to the elastic parameter and also to the parameter associated with the energy of decohesion.