This paper presents further research on the parametric identification of structures with non-linearities in stiffness and damping properties. Parametric identification is carried out using acceleration responses in the time domain and is useful for structural health monitoring. Cubic nonlinearities in springs and quadratic nonlinearities in dampers are considered. Structural parametric identification is modeled as an inverse problem, based on minimizing the difference between measured responses and calculated responses from a mathematical model. The results of both global and substructural identification approaches are compared. The substructural approach allows us to identify a smaller domain while ignoring external parameters, resulting in a reduced model, but on the other hand the formulation is more complex. Genetic algorithms (GA) are used for filtering the unknown parameter values from within a given range. Simple real coded GA as well as a superior hybrid version obtained by combining with the Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) have been studied. Several numerical examples, including variations of a 10 DOF non-linear lumped mass system and a 12 member truss with several non-linear tuned mass dampers have been studied. The effect of measurement noise have been considered. The substructural method is shown to be superior overall in terms of speed, accuracy and economy (number of sensors) although the global identification approach implemented in conjunction with hybrid GA performs well in some cases.