THE SORTED NAPPING: A NEW HOLISTIC APPROACH IN SENSORY EVALUATION

Holistic approaches (i.e., approaches that consider items as a whole), such as napping or categorization, are becoming increasingly popular in sensory analysis. The choice between one or the other method depends on the importance we grant to their own specificities (napping is more rich and categorization is more synthetic) or on our own practices and habits. This article describes a new approach that combines both napping and categorization: each panelist is asked to provide a tablecloth on which he/she can reveal explicit groups by circling products. A methodological difficulty then appears: is it possible to simultaneously take into account the coordinates of the products (quantitative variables) and the groups they belong to (qualitative variable) within a global analysis? The article describes the methodology used: hierarchical multiple factor analysis (HMFA). HMFA balances the part of each panelist on the one hand and within each panelist the part of each approach (napping and categorization) on the other hand. HMFA provides usual factorial analyses representations (a representation of the products for example) and specific representations (a representation of the subjects, of the products according to the point of view of each subject, etc.). This method is illustrated with an example in which 24 panelists performed a sorted napping on eight smoothies. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS The aim of this article is to present a new approach to collect data: this approach combines both napping and categorization and is called the sorted napping. With a complete methodology to analyze the data obtained from sorted napping and a detailed example, the research conducted in this article may be useful for sensory analysts.