The improvement obtained by epithermal neutron activation analysis was studied in terms of the detection sensitivity and precision in the γ-ray spectrometry for geological and biological reference samples. For geological samples, small improvement was observed only for the elements As, Ba, Sb, Se and U. For biological samples, however, large improvement was observed for As, Br, Sb and U. The ratio of the resonance integral to the effective thermal-neutron capture cross section was observed for 19 nuclides. The effect of the (n, p) reaction to the determination of Al and Mg by the ordinary reaktor-neutron activation analysis was estimated.