Site effects and Q factor were inverted using the spectral ratio technique. The study area corresponds to central Costa Rica where the Earthquake Engineering Laboratory (INII-UCR) runs a strong motion network. The technique differs from the usual approach in that it makes use of a reference earthquake instead of a reference site. For that reason, the amplitude of the site effects that are obtained corresponds to the absolute amplification. The results indicate that stations located on soft sediment sites tend to have larger amplification values compared to other stations located on more compacted soils. The Q factor we obtained was frequency dependent with an approximate value of Q(f) = (131,6 ± 0,1)f (1,1 ± 0,2) .