Theoretical results are formulated to assess the strength of the effect of self-compensation of errors in the
thicknesses of layers of multilayer optical coatings. They are applicable to any method of optical monitoring
of the deposition process. It is shown that considering a possible presence of a strong error self-compensation
effect is of great importance for choosing a monitoring method. A comparative analysis of the results obtained
to date to assess the strength of the error self-compensation effect for various types of coatings has been carried
out. Moreover, a number of results were obtained for the first time directly in this work. The results obtained
can be used to select the optimal method for monitoring the deposition process depending on the type of
coating.