There are many different methods applied to obtain the optical constants of thin films using transmission spectrum, none of them applied to photoactive polymer thin films. The aim of this work is to find the suitable method for routine measurements of photoactive polymer thin films. In order to achieve this goal, different methods are applied to simulated thin films of known optical constants to compare their accuracies, hence choosing the most suitable method for studying the photoactive polymer thin films. It is found that the fitting methods are not suitable for photoactive polymer thin films while numerical solution of two independent transmission measurements is suitable for such films, so poly methyl methacrylate (PMMA) films doped with different concentrations of photoactive unit Disperse Red 1 (DSR1) are characterized using this method. The refractive index of PMMA doped with 0.2% of DSR1 (1 g PMMA, 2 mg DSR1) is found to be 1.534 with error 0.656% at lambda = 630 nm. It is also found that the refractive index of photoactive polymer thin films increases linearly with increasing photoactive unit up to concentration 0.25%. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.