Guideline for harmonisation of measures and protocols product and food experience measures in surveys

Task 43 aims to select the most relevant measures related to productfood experience and expectations for harmonisation and develop guidelines 1 Hedonic measures on product perceptions Over the last decades a number of scales have been developed and utilized to measure hedonic responses in both basic psychophysical and applied research In recent years a number of new scaling methods have been developed resulting in discussions about theoretical and practical differences among the methods The currently used measures and scales will be reviewed and the most appropriate measures for different needs will be selected and included in the protocol guidelines 2 Perception of food products and concepts In many consumer studies perceptions of product prototypes or descriptions are used to measure consumers specific perceptions of products that can be related to consumer characteristics These typically include product attributes that related to food choice motives such as healthiness convenience price and mood However there is no harmonisation on how these attributes are measured and providing guidelines and harmonising the use of scales would enable to compare findings and combine datasets from different studies 3 Knowledge and nutrition literacy Consumer knowledge is a multidimensional construct involving the familiarity and expertise the consumer has about food products nutrition cooking and other food related issues Nutrition literacy describes consumers ability to interpret the nutritionrelated information in a meaningful way Both knowledge and nutrition literacy have been measured with various scales dependent on the use context culture and country This task will produce guidelines and protocols on appropriate measures of the different knowledge constructs as well as how and when they could be used