To provide a turbo decoding method capable of significantly improving efficiency of a determination as to whether or not to end decoding.If the decoding by a turbo decoder is started, a soft decision value of an element decoder is derived, and an ECR of a current frame is estimated from the soft decision value by an ECR criterion deriving portion. If determined to be an end as a result of an end determination of the decoding by the turbo decoder from a result of comparison with a last ECR value and the maximum number of times of repetition of decoding, a hard decision result and a decoding result are outputted, and if not determined to be the end, the number of times of repetition is counted up so as to repeat the above process.