Comparison of sensory profiles by two different check-all-that-apply (CATA) terms developed from trained panelists and naïve consumers

Abstract

The application of check-all-that-apply (CATA) questions to consumer sensory profiles has become popular over the past 20 years. The present study used sensory evaluations of yogurt to investigate how CATA terms from trained panelists (T-TP) and naïve consumers (T-C) affected the frequency of the use of terms, discrimination of samples, and reproducibility of sample evaluations. T-TP was developed by trained panelists after training sessions for a descriptive analysis of yogurt. T-C was elicited from naïve consumers using open-ended questions. A sensory evaluation of nine yogurt samples was conducted using CATA with T-TP and T-C by 85 naïve consumers. It was found that T-C was chosen more frequently by the consumers than T-TP, and the number of terms with significant differences between the samples was higher in the CATA with T-C than that with T-TP. Additionally, the use of T-C improved the reproducibility of the sample evaluations with a higher attribute selection stability index (SSI). Correspondence analysis showed that the overlap in the confidence ellipses was smaller for T-C than for T-TP, indicating that the sample discrimination power was higher when using T-C. In summary, our findings suggest that the use of T-C in CATA questions has an advantage in sensory profiling and product discrimination.