This study represents the first systematic attempt to characterize the possible sources of artifacts that can interfere with the measurement of circular intensity differential scattering (CIDS) as a function of the scattering angle. A theoretical analysis of the effect of imperfect incident circular polarizations in the measurement of baselines from nonchiral scatterers and in the signals from chiral samples is derived. From this analysis the requirements of the tolerance on the quality of the incident circular polarizations to unequivocally measure the CIDS effect are established. The protocol for alignment of the CIDS instrument and the characterization of the incident polarizations utilized in these studies are described in detail. CIDS measurements on suspensions of helical sperm cells are presented. The experimental results are modeled computationally with the use of the current CIDS theory. Good agreement between the data and the computations is obtained. The results clearly indicate the ability of CIDS to provide information on the long‐range chiral organization of samples in solution. Copyright © 1986 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.