How Argentine consumers understand the Spanish translation of the 9-point hedonic scale

Comparative performance of the nine-point hedonic, hybrid and self-adjusting scales in the generation of internal preference maps

“…The later is associated with the tendency of panelists to repeat the same response in situations where several consecutive stimuli are presented, (iv) under use of end categories since the panelists avoid using extreme categories, effectively reducing the nine-point scale to a seven-point scale. This decreases the scale ability to detect differences amongst samples of high or low acceptance and (v) sensory data collected using the nine-point hedonic scale frequently fail to satisfy the statistical assumptions of normality, homoscedasticity and additivity required by the analysis of variance (ANOVA) models (Curia, Hough, Martínez, & Margalef, 2001;Gay & Mead, 1992;Giovanni & Pangborn, 1983;Macpherson & Randall, 1985;O'Mahony, 1982;Schutz & Cardello, 2001;Vie, Gulli, & O'mahony, 1991;Villanueva, Petenate, & Da Silva, 2000Warnock, Shumaker, & Delwiche, 2006).…”

Performance of the hybrid hedonic scale as compared to the traditional hedonic, self-adjusting and ranking scales

“…With respect to the traditional nine-point structured hedonic scale, the following inconveniences have been pointed out by several researchers: (i) little freedom for the panelists to express their sensory perceptions, due to the limited number of response categories, (ii) although the numerical values attributed to the categories have equal intervals, they do not reflect equal differences in perception, (iii) numerical and contextual effects are more likely to occur using this scale as a result of both consumer differences in interpretation of a category label and errors of habituation, associated with the tendency of panelists to repeat the same response in situations where several consecutive stimuli are presented, (iv) they produce central tendency effects since the panelists avoid using extreme categories, reducing effectively the nine-point scale to a seven-point scale, resulting, as a consequence, in a decrease in the ability to detect differences amongst samples of high or low acceptance (Curia, Hough, Martínez, & Margalef, 2001;Gay & Mead, 1992;Giovanni & Pangborn, 1983;McPherson & Randall, 1985;OÕMahony, 1982;Schutz & Cardello, 2001;Vie, Gulli, & OÕMahony, 1991;Villanueva et al, 2000).…”

Validation of a degree of difference (DOD) cut-off point using cross-cultural insight for quality purposes

“…This observation could be related to the fact that participants from the two cultures used differently the 9-point hedonic scale as previously published (Yeh et al, 1998;Curia, Hough, Martínez, & Margalef, 2001;Hough, 2007). The fact that two different sets of products were used in both countries made it difficult to compare the use of the 9-point hedonic scale between the two cultures in which the tests were conducted.…”

“…However, a way to palliate for the use of the scale and problems related to the translation of the categories between cultures has been proposed by Hough in 2007. He and other authors concluded from previous studies that the 9-point hedonic scale works well in English speaking countries, however that due to translation meaning issues, it did not seem to be that efficient with Spanish speaking countries (Curia et al, 2001;Hough, 2007). He therefore suggested to either use a hedonic scale that reflects the country customs in terms of measurement, such as rating the liking out of 10 in Argentina, or to replace the original version of the 9-point hedonic scale with a modified version such as the box scale, that is the 9-point hedonic scale with only the two extreme and middle categories labelled (Hough, 2007).…”