Bradley-Terry-Luce scale of taste qualities of champagne]

In a paired comparison experiment 783 subjects judged five different brands of champagne (three normal and two alcohol-reduced). Each subject judged only one single pair with respect to which one tasted more fizzy ("spritziger"), dry ("trockener"), prickling ("prickelnder") and better ("besser"). Three extended versions of the Bradley-Terry-Luce model are discussed and used to assess scale values for the criteria as well as for order effects. The results can be summarized into three points: (1) Goodness-of-fit for the simple BTL-model is satisfactory for all criteria--except for the judgement "tastes better than". (2) Using four graded response categories instead of dichotomous responses decreases goodness-of-fit considerably. (3) Alcohol-reduced brands are less "dry", but are quite within the range of the other brands with respect to the remaining criteria. It is argued that the particular scaling method used is especially useful for deciding which criteria are appropriate for measurement on a one-dimensional scale and which are not.