Accuracy and Reliability of Fabric’s Hand Subjective Evaluation

Abstract

Subjective assessments treat fabric hand as a psychological reaction obtained from the sense of touch, based on
experience and sensitivity of humans. In this paper we identify the effect of judge panel’s training number and
methodology upon the accuracy and agreement level between the results of fabric’s hand subjective evaluation. The
objects of subjective evaluation are three groups of 100 % cotton fabric, treated by commercial stiffener. The
concentration of stiffener in each group differed by 3 ml/l, by 5 ml/l, by 7 ml/l, respectively. The experiments are
performed with the panel of ten qualified judges. The samples of assessed fabric are ranked individually for such textile
subjective characteristics as: hardness, stiffness, flexibility, softness, roughness, smoothness, stretchability and
resiliency. The discussion of agreement level changes on the basis of Kendall’s coefficient of concordance W is
presented for total hand evaluation, as well as for individually assessed fabric’s subjective characteristics. The reliability
of trained judge panel is evaluated.