AbstractThe method of comparative molecular field analysis (CoMFA) has been applied to a series of 6 reactions involving a transition‐metal center and a series of substituted phosphine ligands. A CoMFA analysis of parameters used in classical QSAR including the Tolman cone angle and Brown's steric parameter ERhas also been performed. Provided that the dataset of compounds is carefully chosen and is sufficiently large, CoMFA can be used in place of traditional QSAR methods which have employed Tolman cone angles and carbon‐13 chemical shifts as parameters. The CoMFA results show that steric and electronic factors have comparable weight in determining chemical reactivity in the types of reactions conside