P. G. School, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi
Since the problem of judgement of the quality of many plant products is psychological in character, the techniques used by psychometricians can be adopted for solving this problem. Of the techniques presented in this paper, the method of paired comparisons is perhaps the most useful and appropriate. A preference scheme by paired comparisons is better than one by the adoption of ranking method or scoring method because with ranking or scoring, A preferred to B and B preferred to C implies that A is preferred to C whereas in paired comparison it may happen otherwise also. Thus, paired comparisons give a chance for such departures from ranking or scoring to show themselves. A new test procedure for paired comparisons has been presented as also suitable designs. The statistical problems posed in the selection of judges and choice of design and the solutions given are the best possible.
