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RESEARCH PRODUCT

A comparison between nine laboratories performing triangle tests

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WOS: 000299451400001; International audience; Fifteen groups of participants in nine laboratories performed triangle tests with two pairs of soft drinks. Groups differed in practice level with triangle tests: eight groups of 60 consumers who were not used to triangle test, three groups of qualified assessors who have already performed a few triangle tests, and four groups of trained assessors with a more extensive practice of triangle tests; qualified and trained groups included 9 or 18 assessors. The soft drinks were made from syrups at two levels of dilution in order to achieve about 55% of correct responses to test for difference and about 40% of correct responses to test for similarity. Participants performed three replicated tests with each pair of drinks, except the groups of 9 assessors who performed six replicated tests. When testing for difference, large inter-groups differences were observed. One consumer group and one trained group from two different laboratories failed by far to reach the critical number of correct responses leading to demonstrate a significant difference between products. For similarity test, all consumer groups demonstrated a significant similarity whereas two qualified groups and one trained group did not. This is explained by a slightly higher level of performance for qualified and trained assessors compared to consumers. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.