Streamline Your Panel Training

Now it’s easier than ever to improve the performance of your trained panel. With Compusense® five, panel leaders can easily customize questionnaires to align with specific descriptive testing requirements. In fact, when you select “profile mode,” you can place up to 18 attribute scales on one computer screen. Best of all, Compusense five gives you the ability to create multiple sessions, making it easy to collect replicate data from your panelists.

Fast, Efficient FCM

Cut your training costs in half with Compusense FCM® (Feedback Calibration Method). This proven method, found exclusively in Compusense five, is an invaluable tool for panelist training, calibration and performance monitoring.

With FCM, during the product orientation process, panelists receive immediate, individualized visual feedback to help them learn attributes and how to scale them. Instantly, they'll know if their score falls within the acceptable range for an attribute of the product. Targets and ranges can be set from previous descriptive sensory work or established based on panelist evaluations. Then, they can be refined iteratively by the panel itself. Through training reports, using target and range values, you can easily monitor the panel, evaluate their performance and identify areas requiring recalibration.

Below, you’ll find an example of the panelist feedback screen. Here, the panelist has rated the flavour attributes for a specific sample and moved onto the next screen. The red ticks represent the panelist scores. The blue ovals identify the acceptable range for the attribute.

Review Compusense's innovative FCM research publications. Learn more.

Evaluating Panelist Performance Following the Test

If you’re running FCM, and you’ve set targets and ranges for some of the attributes you’re testing, you can generate the following reports:

Hits and Misses: This report provides frequency counts that indicate how often the target was hit versus how many opportunities there were to hit it. It offers a useful summary for each panelist and the panel as a whole. The report also provides specific information for each attribute, sharing valuable information on how well the panel performed for each attribute.

Calibration Report: This report provides distance from target measurements. As with the “hits and misses report,” the calibration report shares useful summaries for each panelist, the panel as a whole and each attribute. It expresses the distance and/or relative adjusted distance of the panelist responses in relation to the training targets and ranges, helping the panel leader determine where corrective action is required.

Calibration Charts: Calibration charts offer an easy way to visualize panel calibration report summaries, displayed in one of two styles: traffic lights or eclipses. Using the traffic light option, panelist performance is categorized into one of three groups: excellent/high, moderate and unsatisfactory/low scores. The traffic light colors (green, amber and red) are associated with these score classifications. As an alternative, the eclipses chart option can be selected. It displays panelist performance over a range of eclipse shapes from full sun (excellent/high) to half eclipse (moderate) to full eclipse (unsatisfactory low).

Show Marks for Previous Samples

“What did I score that last sample?” Are your descriptive panelists asking this very question? With Compusense five, you can choose to show your panelists their marks—this applies to line scales and LMS questions—for previously evaluated samples. This feature can be used in conjunction with FCM.

Other Panel Training Features Include:

• Panelist Result Summary: Learn how individual panelists responded to line scale, category/hedonic and keypad questions. Choose the “means and standard deviation” reports field to compare individual panelist scores to the panel mean and standard deviation. Set training “targets and ranges” to compare panelist scores to target and range values. When the test is completed, display a results summary at your individual panelist stations.
• Panelist Attendance Reports: Request an attendance report for any panelist in your database. Organized by project, the report identifies the panelist’s results and the number of tests they registered for and completed. Options such as date range, search for specific panelists and the ability to identify projects with one or more analysts make it easy to personalize your report.
• Export Your Data: With just one button, conduct multivariate analysis by exporting your project data directly into PanelCheck and Senstools.