The meshless weighted least-square (MWLS) method was developed based on the weighted least-square method. The method possesses several advantages, such as high accuracy, high stability and high e?ciency. Moreover, the coe?cient matrix obtained is symmetric and semi- positive de?nite. In this paper, the method is further examined critically. The e?ects of several parameters on the results of MWLS are investigated systematically by using a cantilever beam and an in?nite plate with a central circular hole. The numerical results are compared with those obtained by using the collocation-based meshless method (CBMM) and Galerkin-based meshless method (GBMM). The investigated parameters include the type of approximations, the type of weight functions, the number of neighbors of an evaluation point, as well as the manner in which the neighbors of an evaluation point are determined. This study shows that the displacement accuracy and convergence rate obtained by MWLS is comparable to that of the GBMM while the stress accuracy and convergence rate yielded by MWLS is even higher than that of GBMM. Furthermore, MWLS is much more e?cient than GBMM. This study also shows that the instability of CBMM is mainly due to the neglect of the equi- librium residuals at boundary nodes. In MWLS, the residuals of all the governing equations are minimized in a weighted least-square sense.