Parameter identification is studied in viscoelastic rods by solving an inverse problem numerically. The material properties of the rod, which appear in the constitutive relations, are recovered by optimizing an objective function constructed from reference strain data. The resulting inverse algorithm consists of an optimization algorithm coupled with a corresponding direct algorithm that computes the strain fields given a set of material properties. Numerical results are presented for two model inverse problems; (i)the effect of noise in the reference strain fields (ii) the effect of minimal reference data in space and/or time data.