A large number of indices to describe species and structural diversity within forest stands have been developed. A number of investigations deal with their assessment and accuracy when sampled. However, there is a need of investigations dealing with the accuracy and the sensitivity of their change, as caused by forest management measures, intended to change the structure of stands towards a higher or lower complexity level. The data of the study comprise permanent sample plots in stands which were treated in order to (i) keep their uneven-aged structure at equilibrium, (ii) to improve their structure and (iii) plots which lost their structure despite the treatment and (iv) plots in conversion from an even-aged structure towards an uneven-aged one. Spatially explicit as well as spatially inexplicit indices have been investigated. The results show that (i) only few of the indices respond heavily enough to the treatments in the expected way, (ii) some of the spatially explicit indices correlate with spatially inexplicit ones in a way that they may replace the first ones in order to describe structural changes even for a time when the tree coordinates have not yet been measured. For some indices it is necessary to calculate them for parts of the diameter range to be able to detect changes.