John Mandel of the National Bureau of Standards defined repeatability and r
eproducibility measures to assess within laboratory and between laboratory
measurement variability in inter-laboratory (round robin) analytical studie
s. This paper will demonstrate that these same measures can be applied to t
he problem of assessing sensory panelist performance. Repeatability and rep
roducibility will be defined in the context of bo th analytical inter-labor
atory studies and sensory panels. Formulas for the measures will be given.
Examples using these measures with sensory panel data and their interpretat
ion will be discussed. Since a typical sensory panel evaluates a much large
r number of attributes compared with the number of analytical measurements
in an analytical round robin test, some practical considerations as to how
to use these measures efficiently will be proposed. Finally, a graphical me
thod of displaying sensory panel data will be demonstrated as an alternativ
e to using these measures, while keeping the repeatability and reproducibil
ity concepts intact. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.