Performance Test of Vitamin B6 Test Kit Candidate

Abstract

Vitamin B6 test kit was designed as an alternative, affordable and user-friendly analysis tool for small and medium enterprises which process bananas. Its performance was evaluated twice with 70 respondents and the measurements considered satisfying when the results were laid in the range of one square deviation from the real value that determined by spectrophotometer. Performance tests results then compared to pH measurement using pH indicator, the more familiar test kit that also rely on human ability to distinguish color. The first performance test to respondents that closely related to chemical measurement got 33 success results and 29 respondents gave satisfying results which was comparable to pH measurement that gave 31 of 33 satisfying results. The second performance test was conducted by 70 respondents which involving respondents with background that unrelated to chemical measurement. As much as 34 success results for both measurements from the related group but only 32 and 27 success measurements for pH measurement and Vitamin B6 measurement using kit, respectively, from the unrelated group. The second performance test results for pH measurement did not give significant difference with the second one, 34 of 35 satisfying results from closely related group and 27 of 32 from unrelated group. Second performance test results for Vitamin B6 was significantly different from the first one since the respondents required to conduct the measurement twice and the results were reported as average values. Vitamin B6 kit gave 23 of 61 satisfying results with 15 of 34 were from the closely related group and 8 of 27 from the unrelated group. Data from closely related group from second performance test were further analyzed by considered as two separated measurements and compared to the results from the first performance test. It was found that measurement conducted first gave only 2 of 34 satisfying results compared to 22 of 34 from measurement conducted at second. The results were also recapitulated and analyzed based on background and gender. Closely related group gave 44.12%, 29.41%, 26.47% satisfying, query and unsatisfied measurement results, respectively. These results were better compare to the unrelated group that only gave 29.63%, 25.93% and 44.44%. Female respondents gave 36.36%, 36.36%, 27.27% satisfying, query and unsatisfied measurement results, respectively, which better than male respondents that gave 41.18%, 5.88% and 52.94%. Vitamin B6 kit had good performance as a test kit candidate but still required many improvements so the measurement results doesn’t affected by gender, user background and number of conducted measurement. Better design of color chart was a proposed improvement to reduce the fatigue of eye's conical cell that will be conducted in the next study.