The stress field in a tabbed straight-sided tensile test specimen has been studied theoretically and experimentally. It is shown that the stress field has to be studied at every point in the specimen. It is also shown that the tab should be made as thick as possible and the clamping force set as large as possible in order to minimize the intensity of the stress field in the specimen. The tab's Young's modulus in the test direction is the elastic constant having the largest influence on the stress field in the specimen. However, it is shown that it is not possible to set general guidelines regarding the choice of the tab material. Failure modes of specimens where the tabs are bonded and where the tabs are molded directly on the test material were compared. Molded specimens produce better quality results.