Despite recent publications, the strain transfer in distributed optical fiber sensors is still often overlooked and poorly understood. In the first part of this paper, strain transfer is shown to be driven by a second-order differential equation, whether the optical fiber is embedded into the host material or surface-mounted. In this governing equation, only the value of a key parameter, called strain lag parameter, varies according to the attachment configuration and the type of optical fiber used as a sensor. Then, a general solution of the governing equation is proposed. It is an analytical expression established from new boundary conditions that are more adequate than those used previously in the literature and allows the determination of the strain profile in the core of a distributed optical fiber sensor under any arbitrary strain fields. This general solution has been validated by two experiments presented in the third part of the paper. A very good agreement between the analytical solutions and measured strain profiles using a high spatial resolution optical interrogator for both uniform and non-uniform strain fields has been obtained. These results highlight the importance of the strain lag parameter which must be taken into account for a correct interpretation of measurements, especially in the case of important strain gradients.