Trained listeners improve test sensitivity but misrepresent general audience opinion

Evidence

When conducting the tests, it is also necessary to control the level of listening test experience of the subjects. The panel of test subjects may be trained to be as sensitive as possible to the researched attributes of sound, unexperienced listeners, or something in between. A trained panel is needed if one wants to conduct reproducible tests at the finest resolution of a specific property of hearing. Training makes subjects more ‘analytic’: they learn how to analyse the auditory input and to describe it in an objective manner. On the other hand, the opinion of trained listeners may not represent the opinion of the larger audience, as, for example, in product sound quality questions. In such cases, a relatively large set of listeners from the population segment of interest must be used. — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 879

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes analytic trained-listener panels from population-representative panels for sound quality research.
• XREF: connects to: Audience measurement ceded programming control to ratings rather than taste or decency — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 494