Background Descriptive sensory analysis (DSA) aims to describe the sensory attributes
of food products. A panel of assessors analyze a sample of the product to identify and
name a set of attributes and estimate their intensity.
Objective The aim of the study was to research how attributes are identified, described
and presented in the scientific use of DSA.
Method By using descriptive statistics, 74 articles published in scientific journals between
1974 and 2019 were analyzed quantitatively. Data collection was conducted using 17
variables. Correlations between variables and differences between groups were analyzed
using statistical tests.
Results Of the articles 96 % were published in non-sensory-specific journals. Generic
descriptive analysis (GDA) was used in two thirds of the articles. In more than half of the
articles the number of assessors, or the time spent on assessor training, differed from what
is recommended. An avarage of 1.4 descriptive words were used to name each attribute. In
half of the articles no definitions of the attributes were given. In two thirds of the articles
no reference products were presented to illustrate the attributes or different points of the
scale. In three quarters of the articles the attributes were presentet in the section of method
description, and not the results. The avarage share of nouns was 68.2 % and 31 %
adjectives. A moderate negative correlation between the share of nouns and the time spent
on panel training was significant.
Conclusion Sometimes DSA is used without panel recommendations being followed.
There are scientific articles where the sensory attributes are presented vaguely enough to
question the usability of the results. To interperet naming of the sensory attributes as a
qualitative results could motivate a more defined presentation, which would benefit the
quantitative result (intensity assesment) by explaining what is meassured.