Waves propagating in real media such as the atmosphere, ocean, earth, seafloor sediments, etc., are subject to attenuation due to both intrinsic absorption and scattering by medium inhomogeneities. Measurements of attenuation in such media yield the combined effect of these two mechanisms but do not yield directly the individual effect of each of them acting in isolation. In order to obtain information on these individual attenuation mechanisms from measurements of the total attenuation, it is necessary to use analytical techniques based on the theory of wave propagation in the medium. The purpose of the present investigation is to derive such a technique for the case of scalar waves propagating in a one‐dimensional, weakly dissipative, randomly inhomogeneous medium. The approach makes use of analytical expressions derived previously for the mean intensity and mean squared intensity of the field. With the aid of measurements of these two quantities, both the absorption coefficient and the scattering coefficient (of attenuation) of the medium can be obtained. [Research supported by NORDA.]