Sensory Quality Measurement Based on SDT Discrimination

Sensory quality management is crucial for product development as it ensures that products meet consumer expectations and preferences. Discrimination tests are widely used in sensory evaluation to identify differences between products. Signal detection analysis can be used to calculate d -primes (d'), which quantify the size of the difference between products. This chapter proposes a new classification of discrimination tests and explains how they are conducted, highlighting performance differences between different test methods. Reference-based discrimination tests are then explained as to how they can be used as sensory quality measurements. The data processing to compute signal detection theory indices to check the performance is also discussed. The chapter proposes a strategy for defining and maintaining sensory action standards in seven steps and concludes with a case study. Finally, further developments in sensory quality management are discussed.