Measuring sensorial quality of Iberian Ham by Rasch model

This paper focuses on a fresh way to determine qualify 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.