Estimates of Relative Acceptability from Paired Preferences

Abstract

The relative acceptability of a food or beverage is often of interest in a variety of different research topics. In humans, a 9-point category scale is typically used when the hedonic characteristics of several products are of interest. However, these scales are not consistently used by participants and therefore reliability is low. This paper outlines the effectiveness of four techniques (mElo, Thurstonian modeling, Bradley-Terry, and Friedman) to calculate numerical values for products based upon their performance in a paired preference paradigm. In this study, acceptance data from 4 separate studies were compared to numeric scores constructed from a paired preference paradigm. In general, numeric ratings compared constructed from paired comparisons correlated very well with the mean overall liking ratings. The relationship between these acceptance ratings and numerical preference ratings did show to be somewhat dependent on the type of food product. This study serves as a guide to those looking to further quantify paired preference data.