This document gives guidelines for assessing the overall performance of a quantitative descriptive panel and the performance of each panel member.

This document is applicable to the validation of the training of individual assessors or panels, as well as to the performance monitoring of established panels.

This document does not apply to the panel performance for descriptive methods where the individual scores of each assessor are not recorded, where there is no single list of attributes that is common to all the assessors, or where dominance rather than intensity is measured. Consequently, the performance of descriptive panels using methods such as consensus profile, free-choice profile, flash profile and temporal dominance of sensations (TDS) are out of scope.

The methods specified in this document are for monitoring and assessing the ability of a panel and its assessors to discriminate between products, the agreement between assessors of the same panel and the repeatability of these assessors in their intensity scoring.

Reproducibility, including both the comparison between panels and the comparison within the same panel of several evaluations conducted under different conditions (i.e. separated in time), is out of scope of this document.

The methods specified in this document can be used, in full or a selection only, by the panel leader to appraise continuously the performance of panels or individual assessors. The methods listed are not exhaustive and other appropriate methods can also be used.