In order to tailor the synthesis of new robust organic materials for electronic applications and to guarantee the required life time for the emerging commercial plastic electronic applications it is of key importance to understand the underlying degradation mechanisms. Since plastic electronics is a rather young technology introducing new material systems, its reliability is characterized by new failure and degradation mechanisms, a relatively high amount of early failures and multi-modal failure distributions. To understand the mechanism responsible for a given failure or degradation mode, it is essential to study it separately, through appropriate test structures and test techniques. Powerful techniques for this purpose are a.o. analytical techniques (SEM, TEM, SPM,…), in-situ electrical measurement techniques and spectroscopical techniques (in-situ FTIR, in-situ UV-Vis, PDS). The benefits of these in-situ techniques in the reliability study of organic based electronics will be illustrated in this contribution.