Measuring Sensorial Quality of Iberian Ham by Rasch Model

This paper focuses on a fresh way to determine quality of ham according to sensorial analysis. It is an application of latent traits theory to biometry. “Quality of Iberian Ham” can be considered a latent variable defined by a set of sensorial analysis factors (items). The theoretical background is Item Response Theory (IRT), which suggests that if we can understand how each item in a set of items operates with an object, then we can estimate a measure for the object. The Rasch model is the most common model for that theory. This technique has been applied to data from 8 different hams assessed by 15 expert judges tasting ham in order to obtain Rasch measurements for hams and calibrations for the items.