We consider semilinear elliptic problems in which the right-hand-side nonlinearity depends on a parameter λ > 0. Two multiplicity results are presented, guaranteeing the existence of at least three non-trivial solutions for this kind of problem, when the parameter λ belongs to an interval (0,λ*). Our approach is based on variational techniques, truncation methods and critical groups. The first result incorporates as a special case problems with concave–convex nonlinearities, while the second one involves concave nonlinearities perturbed by an asymptotically linear nonlinearity at infinity.