Fabric Hand: Tactile Sensory Assessment

The assessment of fabric hand involves two major classes of variables: fabrics as stimuli with certain physical properties, and people as judges with certain traits. This research investigated the tactile sensory assessment of selected fabrics that varied in specified physical dimensions—namely : stiffness, roughness, and thickness—replicated in two fiber contents: cotton and polyester. In the analysis- of-variance design, physical dimensions of fabrics were taken as fixed, rather than random, variables, and judges as blocks. The subjective-hand properties were measured by polar adjectives using a 99-point certainty scale, transformed to normal deviates. Sensory responses of judges to the nine pairs of polar adjectives differed significantly with respect to all four main effects: fiber content, stiffness, roughness, and thickness. The sensitivity of the 99-point certainty scale resulted in a wide range of F values; various interactions were clarified by graphic analysis. Editing of data for suspected errors in responses caused few changes in the ANOVA results.