Statistical testing of individual differences in sensory profiling

A generalization of the approach of Brockhoff and Skovgaard [Food Quality & Preference, 5 (1994), 215] is given. The emphasis is on univariate assessor performance in sensory profiling. Statistical significance tests for difference between assessors of scaling, variability and sensitivity will be given. A test for disagreement effect is also presented. In addition the approach will provide individual scaling, variability, disagreement and sensitivity values, that can be used for subsequent tabulation, plotting and statistical analysis. The method of maximum likelihood is used throughout and all computations are implemented in a SAS(R) Macro PAN-MODEL that is available via the author's homepage: http://www.dina.kvl.dk/ similar toper. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.