This article describes the development of a method to measure the normalto-plane thermal conductivity of a very thin electrically insulating film on a substrate. In this method, a metal film, which is deposited on the thin insulating films, is Joule heated periodically, and the ac-temperature response at the center of the metal film surface is measured by a thermo-reflectance technique. The one-dimensional thermal conduction equation of the metal/film/substrate system was solved analytically, and a simple approximate equation was derived. The thermal conductivities of the thermally oxidized SiO 2 films obtained in this study agreed with those of VAMAS TWA23 within ±4 %. In this study, an attempt was made to estimate the interfacial thermal resistance between the thermally oxidized SiO 2 film and the silicon wafer. The difference between the apparent thermal resistances of the thermally oxidized SiO 2 film with the gold film deposited by two different methods was examined. It was concluded that rf-sputtering produces a significant thermal resistance ((20±4.5)×10 −9 m 2 ·K·W −1 ) between the gold film and the thermally oxidized SiO 2 film, but evaporation provides no significant interfacial thermal resistance (less than ±4.5 × 10 −9 m 2 · K · W −1 ). The apparent interfacial thermal resistances between the thermally oxidized SiO 2 film and the silicon wafer were found to scatter significantly (±9 × 10 −9 m 2 · K · W −1 ) around a very small thermal resistance (less than ±4.5 × 10 −9 m 2 · K · W −1 ).