Polarization resolved photoluminescence from a cleaved sample edge (edge photoluminescence) is shown to be a useful tool for characterization of complex multiple quantum well InP based structures with wells of different strains. The polarization resolved luminescence resulting from the heavy- and light-hole transitions of In0.51Ga0.49As0.78P0.22tensile and In0.9Ga0.1As0.52P0.48compressive wells are found to match closely with theoretical values, validating assignments applied to the peaks obtained from photoluminescence. Strain distribution is shown to be an important effect when quantum wells of opposite strain are mixed together in the growth structure. The overlap of the transverse-electric (TE) and transverse-magnetic (TM) emissions found from edge photoluminescence on a mixed strain quantum well structure is shown to have an excellent match with the overlap of the TE and TM modes of a laser which uses the same structure in its active region. ©1997 American Institute of Physics.