Southern stem rot (caused by the soilborne fungus Sclerotium rolfsii Sacc.) of peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) traditionally has been assessed based on the percentage of infected 30.5-cm row segments, commonly referred to as disease incidence. Several alternative disease assessment methods were evaluated in four fungicide trials during the growing season (aboveground ratings) and immediately after peanut inversion (belowground ratings). Pearson's correlation coefficients compared disease assessments and yields for all trials. Across all disease assessment methods, belowground assessments at inversion showed a stronger correlation with yield than in-season aboveground assessments. Several of the alternative assessment methods showed a stronger negative correlation with yield than did the traditional disease incidence rating. However, none of the alternative methods were consistently more precise across all assessment dates and trials. There was a significant positive correlation between many of the alternative methods and the traditional disease incidence method. Furthermore, none of the alternative methods was better than the traditional method for detecting differences among fungicide treatments when subjected to ANOVA and subsequent Waller-Duncan mean separation tests (k-ratio = 100). Based on comparisons of the time required to assess disease intensity, the traditional disease assessment method was found to be the most time efficient method of those tested in this study.