Scientific Poster
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How to improve analyses and highlights of graded paired comparisons tests

Paired comparisons - Alternative force Choice (AFC) - are increasingly used in the measurement of the palatability of pet food, where two-bowls paired comparison is considered as the golden standard to assess the preferences of cats and dogs. The Bradley-Terry-Luce model is the most common method used to analyze paired comparison data. However, this method does not take into account the intensity of the difference between the products presented and it assumes that all the subjects have the same preferences. Moreover, when the number of tested products is high, the AFC method generates a huge amount of data which can be tricky to represent with a single chart.

Symrise Pet Food's experts in sensometry worked to improve the analyses of two-bowls paired comparison results by integrating the intensity of the preferences according to the graded paired comparisons analysis. In addition, they compared new data visualisation methods regarding their ability to quickly highlight main differences between a large set of tested products.

The study demonstrated that taking into account graded paired comparison data was feasible in Bradley-Terry-Luce model framework. Results obtained by intregating the intensity of preference were closed to AFC results and slightly more reliable. In addition, the visualization of palatability data was improved with the Balloon plot. This representation highlighted at a first glance the main differences between products.

Authors : J Roguès and E Mehinagic @Symrise Pet Food, Elven, France & P Brault, N Guéry, P Courcoux, M Séménou @Oniris, National College of Veterinary Medicine, Food Science and Engineering, Nantes, France
Results presented at Eurosense 2018.

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