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Similarity or Difference - does it matter?
November 17, 2014Recently we ran a very enjoyable one day Introduction to Sensory Evaluation training course for a key client. Like many companies, they run a lot of difference tests to determine the impact of recipe and process improvements. During the training day there was much debate about the actual objectives behind these tests. Often when running a...
Sensory Claims
November 17, 2014Claim Substantiation 67% of women over 45 say they enjoy celebrating Christmas with their families, while 95% of turkeys would rather spend the festive season getting away from it all! Do you believe those statements or do you think we made them up? It is not unreasonable to assume that any claim is based on some form of research and that this...
Putting Sensory in Context
October 20, 2014On 16th October members of the IFST's Sensory Science group gathered in Southampton for their annual conference. Entitled ‘Putting Sensory in Context', the day explored how the environment and presentation of our samples can influence the results that we obtain. To open we heard from Estelle Petit from the Institute Paul Bocuse, France, whose...
Check All That Apply
March 21, 2014There is no doubt that the popularity of Check all that Apply (CATA) questions in consumer research is increasing and the apparent simplicity of the technique makes it easy to see why. Also known as Tick all that Apply (TATA), CATA offers a simple way for us to investigate ‘why' people like or do not like a product. The alternatives are...
New Test on the Block – Introducing the Tetrad Test
January 05, 2014Sensory difference tests are probably the most widely used form of sensory methodology. We use difference tests to determine whether, with a specified level of confidence, respondents can tell a difference between two experimental samples. These might be a standard product and a recipe variant, a standard and a product made by a different process...
Thermal Tasters and Supra-Threshold Sensitivity
September 03, 2013Last time I updated on the work of our PhD student, Candy, she was putting a poster together for the PFSG Conference. Subsequent to that I am delighted to report that Candy won a Travel Award from Nottingham University and was able to attend Pangborn 2013 in Rio de Janeiro to present the findings of the most recent steps in her research. These...