We used computer simulations to evaluate different procedures for measuring changes in the onset latency of a representative range of event-related components (the auditory and visual N1, P3, N2pc, the frequency-related P3 difference wave). These procedures included several techniques to determine onset latencies combined with approaches using both single-participant average waveforms and jackknife-subsample average waveforms. In general, the jackknife-based approach combined with the relative criterion technique or combined with the fractional area technique (Luck, 2005) provided the most accurate method and the greatest statistical power, with no inflation of Type I error rate.