721

Measuring and Interpreting Low-Stress Fabric Mechanical

and Surface Properties
Part IV: Subjective Evaluation of Fabric Handle

T. J. MAHAR
1 AND R. POSTLE
School of Fibre Science and Technology. The University of New South Wales.
Kensington, NSW 2033, Australia
ABSTRACT
An investigation is presented of the levels of commonality held by panels of judges
from different countries in assessing fabric handle for both summer and winter men’s
suiting materials. The sets of 214 winter and 156 summer fabrics used to obtain the
subjective assessments and the KESF measurements of low-stress mechanical and
surface properties for men’s suiting fabrics form the basis of this investigation. There
is a common notion of the handle of men’s suiting fabrics, and superimposed on this
notion are subtle national preferences and individual differences within national panels.
In the case of summer fabrics, there are two notions of fabric handle: one held in
common by panels from Japan and the People’s Republic of China, and another held
by national panels from Australia, New Zealand, India, the U.S.A., and Hong Kong
and Taiwan. Individual differences between judges within a panel imply that for winter
fabrics, the mean handle assessment of a national panel can be predicted by the judge
whose assessments agree most strongly with the mean assessment of his national panel
to only a moderate level of precision; i.e., only fabrics with differences in mean handle
rating of greater than 1.6 units on a scale from 0.0 ( for unsatisfactory handle) to 5.0
(excellent handle) can be distinguished reliably. The equivalent value for the summer
fabrics is approximately 3 handle grading units (on a scale of1 to 5), based on the
"Western" notion of summer fabric handle held commonly by the six countries lis-
ted here.

Definition and Concept of Fabric Handle
Fabric handle has been defined [ 21 as &dquo;... the
subjective assessment of a textile obtained from the
sense of touch. It is concerned with the subjective
judgement of roughness, smoothness, harshness, pli-
ability, thickness, etc.&dquo; Judgments of fabric handle are
used as a basis for evaluating quality, and thus for de-
termining fabric value, both within the textile, clothing,
and related industries and by the ultimate consumer.
Studies of fabric handle may be of major commercial
significance if they, for example, assist in explaining
handle assessment or provide a means of its estimation
based on objective measurement.
It is necessary to examine the subjective assessment
of handle before examining its relationship to fabric
mechanical and surface properties. Despite the fact that
1
Current address: CSIRO Division of Wool Technology, P.O. Box
7, Ryde, NSW 2112, Australia.
there exists no accepted analytical definition of fabric
handle, as Bona noted [4, 5 ), progress has been made
toward understanding the mechanism by which handle
is measured. In Part III of this series of papers ( 17 J,
we reported the results of nonlinear optimization of
fabric mechanical and surface properties from the
handle of suiting materials. In the first two papers of
the series [ 7, t4]. we reported the levels of precision
obtainable from instrumental measurements of fabric
low-stress mechanical and surface properties and pre-
sented the effects on these properties of finishing.
pressing, and other treatments.
The work presented in this paper reports the levels
of commonality held by panels of judges from different
countries in assessing fabric handle for both summer
and winter men’s suiting materials. Details of this in-
ternational survey. of handle assessments are included
in the appendix to this paper. Sources of variability are
isolated for fabric handle assessments made in different
countries, and values are provided for the variability
associated with these subjective assessments.

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722
SUBJECTIVE ASSESSMENT
The subjective assessment of fabric handle has been
the subject of scientific study over an extended period.
In 1926, Binns [ 3 published a psychologically based
analysis of the assessment of fabric handle. This paper
and other .work by him in this field [ 1, 2 ] provided an
early analysis of the mechanism by which judges seem
to assess handle. Binns concluded that the judgment
of a number of experienced persons gives a more re-
liable and sensitive grading of fabrics than is possible
from an individual judge’s grading.
Howorth and Oliver [ 9 ] made a major contribution
to the analysis of fabric handle assessments. when they
first applied the factor analysis technique developed by
Thurstone [22] in an attempt to identify underlying
interrelationships in the handle assessments of a range
of suiting, lingerie, and dress fabrics. These analyses
isolated three factors responsible for handle, which the
authors identified as smoothness, stiffness, and bulk,
the last of these being related to fabric weight and
thickness. This represented an important step toward
isolating a set of primary fabric hand qualities that
might be used to describe handle preferences.
A number of authors, notably Lundgren [ 13 and
Matsuo et al. [ 16] have attempted to model the as-
sessment of fabric handle based on psychophysical
concepts. Lundgren used concepts from both decision
theory and information theory and proposed the ex-
istence of four sensory centers corresponding to the
four factors that could be isolated from the fabric anal-
ysis of Howorth and Oliver: (a) smoothness, (b) stiff-
ness, ( c ) bulk properties, and (d) warmth. This theory
is analogous to the Young-Helmholtz theory [ 8 ] , which
proposes three color receptors in the eye, one each for
red, green, and blue, for perceiving color.
Matsuo [ 16 ] applied to the analysis of fabric handle
a variation of the Weber-Fechner law, the so-called
&dquo;only valid law in psychophysics&dquo; [ 19 ] . Matsuo as-
sumed that this law held when fabric mechanical prop-
erties were used as the handle stimuli. This model uses
a nonlinear combination of mechanical properties to
explain fabric handle assessments. In practice, the re-
sults obtained from this model depend strongly on the
values assigned to &dquo;minimum sensibility,&dquo; which a
judge can discriminate for each mechanical property.
Estimation of these critical parameters appears to be
somewhat unreliable [ 16 ] .
Kawabata [ I I ] undertook the analysis of assessments
by experts from the Japanese textile industry of the
handle of men’s suiting fabrics. This analysis was based
on two hypotheses: that handle assessments are based
on tactile sensations caused by fabric mechanical and
Downloaded from trj.sagepub.com at LSU Libraries on May 8, 2015
surface properties, and that the final judgement of
handle is based on the suitability of the mechanical
and surface properties for the particular end use of the
fabric. This practical approach to handle analysis led
to the formation in 1972 of the Hand Evaluation and
Standardisation committee (HESC) of the Textile
Machinery Society of Japan. The HESC has proven to
be a very active committee, and has provided expert
judges who have assessed the handle of literally thou-
’
sands of fabrics [ 10 ] .
SUMMARY
The abilities to specify what determines fabric handle
and to control or optimize handle for particular mar-
kets based on objective criteria, i.e., low-stress me-
chanical and surface properties of fabrics, are of major
technical and commercial significance. But no rigorous
analytical definition exists, a priori, for fabric handle
[4, 5 ]. In attempting to develop a system for estimating
or specifying handle, a textile scientist should recognize
from the general definition of handle [ 21 ] that the psy-
chological element in its assessment implies there may
legitimately be differences between individuals. It. is
therefore necessary to establish the existence of, and
to quantify if possible, a unified concept of fabric han-
dle among judges before examining techniques for its
estimation, e.g., by studying relationships between
handle and mechanical and surface properties. It is ex-
tremely unlikely that one concept of handle will apply
for all fabric types, since the requirements of handle
will vary according to market demands.
An International Survey
BACKGROUND
The Hand Evaluation and Standardisation Com-
mittee of the Textile Machinery Society of Japan [11]]
has been responsible for an extensive study within Ja-
pan relating fabric mechanical and surface properties
to handle assessments. The availability of the fabrics
used in the HESC study facilitated our extension of
this work to countries outside Japan, in order to es-
tablish the universality of the definition and concept
of fabric handle held by expert judges from different
countries and different cultural backgrounds, whose
products must satisfy different climatic conditions. The
sets of 214 winter and 156 summer fabrics used to
obtain the subjective assessments and the KESF mea-
surements of mechanical and surface properties for
men’s suitings [ 1] ] fonn the basis of the study we report
in this paper.

ORGANIZATION OF THE SURVEY
An international survey was undertaken of the fabric
handle preferences of judges drawn from the textile,
clothing, and related industries in seven countries, four
of which were represented in the interlaboratory trial
of the KESF instrumentation reported in Part I of this
series of papers [ 14 ] : Japan, Australia, New Zealand,
and the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.). The re-
maining participating countries were India, the United
States, and Hong Kong/Taiwan.2
Expert judges representing each national group in-
dependently assessed the handle of each fabric accord-
ing to their own definitions of fabric handle and the
grading scale shown in Table I. For the analysis of the
survey results, the gradings were assumed to belong to
a continuous scale; indeed some of the judges graded
the handle of some fabrics as &dquo;2.5&dquo; or &dquo;3.5.&dquo; A panel
of consumer judges from Australia also assessed the
fabrics. The details of this survey are discussed in the
appendix to this paper, including a list of the national
coordinators of the survey, the backgrounds of the
judging panels, descriptions of the fabrics, and the de-
sign of the survey.
TABLE I. Fabric handle rating scale.
WITHIN-GROUP AGREEMENT °
The level of agreement on fabric handle assessments
within each of the eight (seven expert and one con-
sumer) panels of judges was established using the fol-
lowing three-step procedure: (a) the mean fabric handle
assessment was calculated within each panel for each
fabric, (b) correlation coeflicients were obtained for
the relationship between the handle assessments of each
judge and the mean assessment of his (or her) national
panel, and ( c ) the mean of these correlation coefficients
was calculated for each national panel. Mean corre-
lation coefficients are shown for each of the eight panels
of judges in Table II for both the winter and summer
fabrics.
2
Owing to the organization of the survey and the patterns of par-
ticipation, Hong Kong and Taiwan are treated as a single national
panel in the analysis of results for this survey.
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723
TABLE II. Mean within-group correlations with the mean fabric
handk assessment of the panels..
National Panels
The strong and highly significant correlation coef-
ficients in Table II show that the eight judges within
each national panel assessed the handle of the fabrics
in a consistent manner. This result indicates that there
is a generally agreed concept of handle within each
national panel for these fabrics. There appears to be
more of a consensus between the judges about winter
fabric handle than the handle of the summer fabrics,
despite the far greater number of winter fabrics assessed.
This is consistent with the observation made by a
number of the judges that there was greater difficulty
in assessing the summer fabrics.
Consumer Panel
The within-group correlations for Australian
mean
consumer judges are also shown in Table II for com-
parison with the expert judges. While being slightly
lower than for the expert panels, the within-group cor-
relations for the consumer panel are strongly signifi-
cant : correlation coefficients greater than 0.140 and
0.175 are significantly different from zero for the winter
and summer fabrics, respectively. The values of the
correlations in Table II indicate general agreement be-
tween the judges in the consumer group. The lower
correlation coefficients for the consumer judges com-
pared to the expert judges is not unexpected. Binns [ 1 ) ]
has concluded that untrained judges possess the same
&dquo;native&dquo; judgment in assessing fabric handle as do ex-
pert judges, but differ from the experts in their lack of
appreciation of technical factors in cloth construction.
BETWEEN43ROUP AGREEMENT
In order to establish whether or not there was agree-
ment between the seven national panels of judges, we
calculated correlation coefficients for the relationships
between the mean handle assessments of each pairing
 724

of the seven national panels. The values of these cor-
relations are shown in Table III for winter fabrics and
Table IV for summer fabrics. The means of these cor-
relations for each panel with each of the other six na-
tional panels are shown in Table V.
TABLE Ill. Correlations between mean handle assessments of
national panels for 214 winter fabrics.
Summer Fabrics
The situation is quite different when comparing the
between-group correlation coefficients for the summer
fabric handle assessments. In this case, there were high
correlation coefficient values (0.74 to 0.82) for com-
parisons between the Australian, New Zealand, Indian,
and U.S. judges. If we add the Hong Kong/Taiwan
panel of judges to this group, there are moderate cor-
relation values for this panel with other panels (from
0.55 to 0.72).
the between-group correlation coefficients involving
the Japanese and Chinese panels on the one hand, and
each of the other national panels on the other, averaged
-0.28 and -0.19 for the Japanese and Chinese panels,
respectively. Values of these correlations ranged from
a low O.13 to negative values as high as -0.40. The

between-group correlation for the Japanese and

TABLE IV. Correlations between mean fabric handle assessments
of national panels for 156 summer fabrics.
TABLE V. Mean values’ of the between-group correlation
coefficients for the handle assessments of each national panel with
the other six panels for the winter and summer fabrics.
*
Mean values taken only for the cases where the sign is constant.
Winter Fabrics
There was a good level of agreement between the
mean handle assessments of the national panels for the
winter fabrics as shown by the high correlation coef-
ficients in Table III. Values of the correlation coeffi-
cients for the Chinese ( P.R.C.) panel (from 0.52
0.71 ) are only moderate compared to the higher values
(from 0.76 to 0.91 ) for all other pairings of the national
panels.
Chinese panels was 0.75.
The analysis of summer fabric handle assessments
indicates that at least two different, and somewhat op-
posite, assessments were made of the handle of men’s
summer fabrics as indicated by the size and signs of
the correlation coefficients in Table IV. One consistent
handle assessment was made in Australia, New Zea-
land, India, the U.S.A. and, to a slighty lesser extent,
in Hong Kong and Taiwan. A second, different, but
again consistent handle assessment was made in Japan
and the P.R.C. There was also a significant level of
direct disagreement between the Japanese/Chinese as-
sessments and those of the other five national panels.
It is unclear whether these two different types of fab-
ric handle preference are based on cultural or climatic
differences or some combination of both. Certainly Ja-
pan and parts of China experience annual periods of
hot ( >30°C ) and very humid (>90% relative humidity)
weather. Similar conditions also apply in some coastal
areas of Australia, India, the U.S.A., and Taiwan, as
well as Hong Kong. One might also argue that of the
seven countries investigated, Japan, the P.R.C.,
Hong
Kong/Taiwan, and India have maintained their strong
cultural identities, despite the obvious influence of
Western culture, e.g., the wearing of Western-style suits.
We will investigate further the reasons underlying the
,
different fabric handle preferences for summer suitings
in Part V of this series.
Summarizing, the analyses of the between-group
agreement among the seven national judging panels
strongly support the notion of an internationally agreed
to concept of fabric handle for winter suiting fabrics.
Conversely, the analyses for the summer fabrics show
that there is definitely not one agreed-upon concept of
handle among the national panels for these fabrics. Two

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different and somewhat opposed concepts of fabric
handle have been isolated.
Patterns of Agreement Between Judges and
Between National Panels
PRINCIPAL COMPONENT ANALYSIS
We used principal component analyses [6] sepa-
rately on the sets of 214 winter and 156 summer fabrics
in order to investigate patterns in the fabric handle
assessments of the expert judges. In this sort of analysis,
a linear transformation is made of a set of data, the
data matrix, in terms of a new set of variables, called
the principal components, such that these principal
components are orthogonal. The principal compo-
nents, or factors, are typically ordered in terms of the
decreasing proportion of the variability in the data ma-
trix accounted for by each principal component.
’
The value of this sort of analysis depends on whether
the majority of the variance in the data is accounted
for by a small number of truly &dquo;principal&dquo; components.
If a small number of principal component factors (in
relation to the number of original variables) accounts
for a large proportion of the variance in the original
variables, these components constitute a valid and
much simplified description of the variability in the
original data, i.e., the original data could be expressed
as a smaller number of independent factors. The anal-
ysis produces a matrix of weightings, called factor
scores, of each parameter on each of the principal
component factors isolated. These weightings can be
interpreted as correlation coefficients between the pa-
rameter and the principal component.
There are two major limitations of principal com-
ponent analysis. Unfortunately, this technique does not
provide a physical description of the principal com-
ponents isolated during the analysis. One must interpret
the pattern of factor scores that constitute a principal
component in order to infer a description of that com-
ponent. Second, no acceptable technique is available
to provide an estimate of the errors applying in this
sort of analysis. Despite these shortcomings, we have
been able to use this analysis to isolate underlying re-
lationships in our fabric handle assessment data.
Statistical programs are available for performing the
necessary transformations of the data. For the analyses
reported here, we used the Statistical Packages for the
Social Sciences (SPSS) [ 20 ] suite of programs.
There were two separate analyses for each set of fab-
rics : one was based on the means of the panels and the
other on the individual judges from each national
panel. This was done to ensure an examination for
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725
underlying interrelationships in both the national pref-
erences and those of the individual judges.
’
WINTER FABRICS
Table VI shows the factor matrices resulting from a
principal component analysis of the mean handle as-
sessments of the seven national panels for both the
winter and summer fabrics. Each of the national panels
had a very high factor score ( >0.91 ) on the only factor
isolated in this analysis for the winter fabrics; the ex-
ception was the Chinese panel (factor score 0.75 ). This
result implies that the mean fabric handle assessments
of the seven national panels are mostly determined by
one common underlying factor.
TABLE Vi. Factor scores from principal component analyses of
mean handle assessments of national panels for winter and summer
fabrics.
Tables VII and VIII summarize the varimax rotated
factor matrices [ 6 J for an analysis of the handle as-
sessments of all 56 (=7 panels x 8 judges/pane!) :n-
dividual judges for both winter fabrics (Table VII ) and
summer fabrics (Table VIII ). For the sake of clarity,
only the numbers of judges from each national panel
who had factor scores equal to or greater than 0.30 are
shown in the table, along with their range of factor
scores. A more detailed listing of these factor scores is
given elsewhere [ 15 . The analysis for the winter fabrics
isolated six factors from the original 56 judges. which
collectively account for 70.4% of the variance in the
data.
The pattern of factor scores for the factor matrix of
individual judges is similar to that shown in Table VI
for the mean assessments of the panels. Most of the
variance, 52.9%, is explained by one factor on which
each judge has a significant ( >0.14 ) factor score, but
726

TABLE VII. Range of factor scores for each of the seven national panels on the rotated factor matrix for the handle assessments
of the 214 winter fabrics: 6 factors with eigenvalue > 1.0; factor scores > 0.30.

extra information is available from the analysis of the SUMMER FABRICS

assessments of the individual judges over and above
that obtained from the mean assessments of the na-
tional panels. This information concerns the pattern
of factor scores in factors 2 to 6, inclusive. On an in-
dividual basis, these five factors account for levels of
variance ranging from 8% for factor 2 to 2.0% for
factor 6.
There are clearly secondary or, in the case of the
Chinese judges, primary fabric handle preferences in-
dependent of the major factor (factor 1 ) for some of
the national panels. The pattern of these preferences
is evident from an inspection of Table VII. The main
features of this pattern are summarized for the fabric
handle assessments of different panels as follows: the
eight judges in the Chinese panel are related strongly
to factor 2 - mean factor score, 0.72; the eight Japanese
judges have moderately high scores on factor 3 - mean
factor score, 0.59; seven of the eight U.S. judges have
moderate scores on factor 4 - mean factor score, 0.45;
and five of the eight Hong Kong/Taiwanese judges
have moderately high scores on factor 5 - mean, 0.58.
Inspection of the factor matrix in Table VI reveals
two results concerning the handle
mean assessments
of the seven national panels for the summer fabrics.
First, two factors are isolated that explain over 80% of
the variance in the data. This result is not unexpected
from the analysis of the correlation data we discussed
earlier in this paper. The second important and more
unexpected result is that each of the national panels,
including the Japanese and P.R.C. judges, has a sig-
nificant factor score on factor 1. There are negative
factor scores for the Japanese and P.R.C. judges, while
scores for the other judges are positive, ranging from
0.71 to 0.92. Although all the national panels consider
the same factor, factor 1, in assessing fabric handle,
the Japanese and P.R.C. judges place an opposite
weighting on the factor compared to the other five
panels of judges. For factor 2, only the Japanese,
Chinese, and Hong Kong/Taiwanese panels had sig-
nificant factor scores (0.74, 0.86, and 0.46, respec-
tively).

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 727

TABLE VIII. Range of factor scores for each of the seven national panels on the rotated factor matrix for the fabric handle assessments
of the I 56 summer fabrics: !0 factors with eigenvalue > 1.0; factor scores > 0.30.

’
Proportion of variance explained.

The pattern of factor scores given in Table VIII for
the fabric handle assessments of the individual judges
is similar to the pattern we reported above for the mean
assessments shown in Table VI. Factors 1 and 2 ac-
count for 32.0% and 14.1 % of the variance in the data,
respectively. The &dquo;secondary&dquo; factors, i.e., factors 3 to
10 inclusive, explain a significant proportion, 20.8%,
of the variance in the data. In this case the pattern of
factor scores is not related to the fabric handle pref-
erences of the national panels. Absolute values of the
scores in these eight factors are also generally low
( <0.40 ) . The less well defined pattern of factor scores
than is the case for the winter fabrics is consistent with
the lower within-group (national panel) correlation
coefficients previously noted for these fabrics compared
with the winter fabrics.
handle assessment of a panel of expert judges from a
given country to represent this common notion of
handle in this study. Some national preferences for
winter fabric handle have been isolated but not de-
scribed by the principal component analysis procedure.
Differences between individuals are to be expected
based on their definition of fabric handle, though the
extent of these differences varies in the countries
studied.
In the case of summer fabrics, we have isolated two
different bases for assessing fabric handle. Variation in
the assessments of individual judges within a national
panel is greater for the summer fabrics than for the
winter fabrics. The subtle preferences in the handle of
the winter fabrics observed for some national panels
(see Table VII ) are not evident for the summer fabrics.

SUMMARY Variability of Fabric Handle Assessments

commonly held concept
There appears to be a single,
among expert judges of fabric handle for winter suiting
fabrics. Superimposed over this notion of winter fabric
handle are differences imposed by national and indi-
vidual preferences. We have chosen the mean fabric
The analyses of winter and summer fabrics show
that there is no perfect agreement about the handle of
these men’s suitings. In this section, we first investigate
whether particular fabrics are responsible for very high
or very low variability in the handle assessments of the

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 728
judges. Second, we use the results of an analysis of
variance to determine sources of variability within the
data and levels of precision in handle assessments.
STANDARD DEVIATIONS WITHIN PANELS
We have calculated standard deviations of the handle
assessments within each panel for each of the 214 win-
ter and 156 summer fabrics used in the international
survey. The means, minima, and maxima of these
standard deviations for each national panel of judges
are shown in Table IXa for the 214 winter fabrics and
IXb for the 156 summer fabrics. The grand average
standard deviations of all the national panels are 0.77
for the winter fabrics and 0.88 for the summer fabrics,
reflecting the greater within-group agreement previ-
ously noted for the winter fabrics compared to the
summer fabrics.
.
TABLE IX. The standard deviations of fabric handle assessments
for seven national panels of expert judges.
The occurrence of a particular fabric among the
lowest standard deviations of a national panel is an
indication that this fabric is responsible for good agree-
ment within that national panel. The reverse applies
for the occurrence of a fabric among the highest stan-
dard deviations of a national panel. The number of
times a given fabric appears among the lowest or highest
5 standard deviations of the fabric handle assessments
for the seven national panels is shown in Table X. We
investigated the occurrence of particular sets of fabrics
or fabric types being responsible for either the
high or
the low standard deviations within a national panel of
judges. This analysis was based on the fabric description
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data given in the appendix and the primary hand value
assessments [ 11 ] .
TABLE X. Frequency of a fabric occurring in the lowest five or
highest five standard deviations for the handle assessments of the
seven national panels.
There was one case where four very smooth, soft,
flexible fabrics
yet extremely occurred three, four, and
five times in this analysis. Each of these fabrics, which
contain cashmere, is among both the lowest and highest
standard deviations of different panels of judges. A
number of judges, particularly from the New Zealand
panel, assessed these fabrics as being of poor handle,
while the majority of judges assessed their handle as
&dquo;above average&dquo; or &dquo;excellent.&dquo; Conflict between some
judges concerning the handle assessments of these fab-
rics may derive from a difference in interpretation of
the term &dquo;handle&dquo; as applied to suitings. There can be
little doubt that these fabrics feel exceptionally smooth,
soft, and flexible compared to the majority in the sur-
vey. Some judges may feel that the poorer expected
wearlife of these fabrics, warrants a &dquo;poor&dquo; handle as-
sessment, whereas other judges accept that these char-
acteristics result in an &dquo;excellent&dquo; fabric handle. How-
ever, Mahar [ 15 showed that fabric durability is not
related to fabric handle assessments in other work. In
Part V, we will provide further discussion of the rela-
tionship between handle preferences and fabric dura-
bility.
Other evidence exists to support the notion that par-
ticular fabrics are responsible for relatively high levels
of disagreement between judges. Kawabata [12] re-
ported on 214 winter suiting fabrics as being &dquo;selected
for more precise judgement of (fabric handle) from
the original 500 samples.&dquo; He also mentioned an in-
dependent set of 40 winter suiting fabrics [ 12 ] assessed
for handle by five of the eight Australian expert judges.
In this case, there was a lower standard deviation (0.49)
of handle assessments by the judges than was the case
for the 214 fabrics, even allowing for the smaller num-
ber of judges. The fabrics used in this second handle
assessment survey were chosen based on two charac-
teristics : the full range of handle gradings was repre-
sented, and there was an excellent agreement amongst
the Japanese panel as to the handle assessments of these

fabrics. The Japanese handle assessments also agreed
strongly with the ratings based on measurements of
mechanical and surface properties [ 12, 177 ]. A full de-
scription of these fabrics, which were published as
standards of winter fabric handle [ 12 ] , can be obtained
elsewhere [ 15 .
Despite the occurrence of the four cashmere-style
fabrics among the very high standard deviations for
the New Zealand judges, there was no general pattern
of particular fabrics or fabric types responsible for the
high variability of the judges’ handle assessments for
either the winter or summer fabrics.
There is a relatively high level of variability within
the handle assessments of each of the two fabric series
surveyed in this analysis. The grand average standard
deviations of handle assessments are 0.77 (winter fab-
rics) and 0.88 (summer fabrics) on a grading with full
scale variation from 1 to 5.0.
ANALYSIS OAF VARIANCE
Model and Assumptions
We made an analysis of variance on the handle as-
sessment data similar to the analysis of the KESF’ data
reported in Part I of this series [ 14 ] in order to establish
sources of variation and measures of repeatability and
reproducibility. This analysis uses the concept of a
mean handle assessment for each national panel rather
than the assessments of a series of individual expert
judges.
The model is based on the results obtained earlier
in this paper. We have assumed that a separate national
assessment exists for each of the seven countries in-
vestigated. We have further assumed that this assess-
ment can be calculated for each country as the mean
assessment of the eight expert judges previously de-
scribed. For the sake of this analysis, we considered
the fabric handle assessments of each judge in a na-
tional panel as replicates of the assessments of that
panel, i.e., replicates in this context refer to handle
assessments of the same sample by one of the expert
judges from within a national panel, not to assessments
of the same sample by the same judge at different times.
Only two handle ratings could be used in this analysis
( i.e., one replicate ) because of the limitations of the
available computing facilities. The two ratings we chose
were the mean handle ratings for each national panel
and the ratings of the judge whose assessments corre-
lated most highly with the mean assessment of his
panel. The handle ratings of this judge provided the
most reliable estimate of the mean assessment of his
national panel.
Downloaded from trj.sagepub.com at LSU Libraries on May 8, 2015
729
There were two analysis of variance studies: one for
the winter and the other for the summer fabrics. The
design of the studies included seven national panels
for the winter fabrics and five panels for the summer
fabrics (Japanese and Chinese panels not included),
214 winter and 156 summer fabrics, and two estimates
of each national handle assessment. Thus the data space
for the winter fabric analysis was
(7 national panels) X ( 214 fabrics) X (2 estimates)
and for the summer fabric analysis
(5 national panels ) X ( 156 fabrics) X (2 estimate)
We also assumed that there was no systematic re-
lationship between the standard deviation and the
mean of the fabric handle assessment within each na-
tional panel. This assumption is supported by the low
correlation (absolute value < 0.33) listed in Table XI
between the mean and the standard deviation of fabric
handle assessments from each national panel. The only
exception was the Indian panel’s assessments of the
winter fabrics (correlation coefficient -0.67). We =
did not see any obvious nonlinear relationships in the
plots between these means and standard deviations.
TABLE Xi. Simple comelation coefficients between the means and
standard deviations of the mean fatxic handk assessments of seven
national panels.
Results
We found differences in handle assessment signifi-
cant at the 5% level between the seven panels for the
winter fabrics and the five panels for the summer fab-
rics. The ( panel X fabric) interaction effects were also
significant as we can see from Table XII, which lists a
breakdown of the components of variance into within-
panel variation, ( panel X fabr~c ) interaction, and be-
tween-panel variation for both the winter and summer
fabrics. The table also includes the grand means and
estimates of the 95% repeatability and reproducibility
intervals [t 8] for the handle assessments.
The greatest source of variation in handle assessment
occurred between each national panel mean and the
judge from within that panel as indicated by the rela-
tively large values of within-panel variation for both
 730

TABLE XII. Analysis of variance for fabric handle assessments Table XIII presents calculated values P w of the per-
’I ’.
7~ by national panels of judges. cent accuracy (or maximum error) for estimating the
mean handle assessment of one, two, four, and eight
individuals judges from within a panel. The table also
gives similar values Po for estimating panel mean as-
sessments from judges drawn from other panels. These
values are calculated on the same basis as we used in
Part I of this series [ 14 ] for objectively measured fabric
low-stress mechanical and surface property data. Based
on the results for the winter fabrics, eight judges from
a panel are able to estimate the panel mean to an ac-

curacy of 12% at the 95% confidence level. Similarly,

four judges from a panel can estimate the mean as-
sessment of other panels to an accuracy of 17%. For
the summer fabrics, the accuracy is 30% for both the
judges’ panel and other four national panels.

sets of fabrics. This variation represents a significant

proportion, 9.7%, of the grand mean for the winter TABLE XIII. Percentage maximum error in the estimation of fabric
fabrics, and a very large proportion, 46%, for the sum- handle assessments by an increasing number of expert judges.
mer fabrics. It indicates that estimates of the mean as-
sessment of a national panel, even from the judge whose
assessments correlated most strongly
with the panel
mean, are subject to a great deal of variation, especially
for the summer fabrics. By comparison, equivalent
values are smaller for the ( panel X fabric) interaction
variance-7.5%a for winter and$6.5% for summer fab-
rics-and for the between-panel variation-1.8% for
winter and 6.5% for summer fabrics.
The large variation is highlighted in the assessment We also madea second and similar analysis of vari-
of handle for a given fabric between judges within the ance using as replicates the handle assessments of the
national panels when examining values for the re- two judges whose decisions correlated most strongly

peatability of these assessments as shown at the bottom with the mean assessment of their national panel. The
of Table XII. For the winter fabrics, the judge whose results of this analysis, given in Table XIV, support
assessments correlate most highly with the mean as- the breakdown of the sources of variance found in the
sessment of his national panel is able to agree with the
mean assessment of the national panel to within 1.6
TABLE XIV. Analysis of variance for fabric handle assessments-
handle grading units in 95% of cases. The equivalent international panels of judges (using two judges as replicates).
value for the summer fabrics is~proximately 3 handle
grading units (on a scale of 1 to 5), based on the
&dquo;Western&dquo; notion of summer fabric handle held com-
monly by panels from Australia, New Zealand, India,
the U.S.A., and Hong Kong/Taiwan.
These results imply that for winter fabrics, a single
judge in isolation can reliably distinguish between
&dquo;poor&dquo; fabric handle on the one hand and &dquo;above av-
erage&dquo; or &dquo;excellent&dquo; handle on the other, between
&dquo;below average&dquo; and &dquo;excellent&dquo;, and between &dquo;av-
erage&dquo; handle on the one hand and either &dquo;excellent&dquo;
or &dquo;poor&dquo; handle on the other. For the summer
fabrics,
a single judge in isolation can reliably differentiate be-
tween &dquo;poor&dquo; and &dquo;excellent&dquo; fabric handle.

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 731

initial analysis. Greater variability was evident between sider the handle preferences for the summer fabrics.
the assessments of the two judges than between the In this case the analysis discerned two different, and
assessments of one judge and the mean assessment of in some sense opposing, notions of fabric handle: one
the panel. identified in common by the Australian, New Zealand,
Indian, U.S., and Hong Kong/Taiwanese panels, and
SUMMARY a second handle preference for the Japanese and P.R.C.
panels.
Despite their simplifying assumptions, these analyses We conclude that there is a common notion of the
of variance have highlighted the great unreliability of
handle of men’s winter suiting fabrics and that, super-
using the fabric handle assessments of one expert judge imposed over this common notion, are subtle national
as a predictor of the assessments of other judges. We
differences and individual differences within national
have quantified the highest expected improvement in
panels. For the summer fabrics there are two notions
accuracy (lowest reduction in percentage error) for us-
of fabric handle: one held in common by the Japanese
ing the mean assessment of selected numbers of judges and P.R.C.
rather than an individual judge, based on the judge panels and another held by the other five
Individual differences between judges within a
whose assessments are most highly correlated to his panels.
national panel are again superimposed over these two
panel mean. For the winter fabrics, relatively low values notions of handle for summer fabrics.
of percentage error can be achieved by including more
The individual differences between judges within a
than four judges in a panel, e.g., 12% maximum error
for the winter fabrics that the mean handle
for eight judges. For the summer fabrics, even using panel imply
assessment of a national panel can be predicted by one
eight judges results in an expected maximum error of expert judge with only a moderate level of
30%. The low between-panel variation and the small precision.
i.e., only fabrics with differences ininean handle rating
increase in the value of reproducibility over repeata-
of greater than 1.6 units on a scale from 1.0 to 5.0 can
bility indicate that prediction is very good from one be
distinguished reliably. This
panel mean to another panel mean. This good predic- reasonable levels, ±0.37 units, reliability
improves to
when the assessments
tion between national panels will not apply for all the
of eight judges are considered for the winter fabrics.
winter fabrics because of the significant ( panel X fabric)
Further useful information about fabric character-
interaction effects we observed in this analysis.
istics, such as smoothness, softness, stiffness, flexibility,
etc., can be obtained based on assessments of these
Conclusions properties. These characteristics may also be used to
A prerequisite for applying low-stress mechanical explain more fully the notions of fabric handle devel-
and surface properties of fabrics to the estimation or oped in this analysis. The next paper in this series con-
prediction of handle is to establish clearly what is meant siders these characteristics or quality attributes in some
by the term &dquo;fabric handle.&dquo; No accepted analytical detail, and a later paper will present an objective clas-
definition exists. The general definition of handle dis- sification of the winter and summer fabrics based en-
cussed in this paper includes an element of psychology, tirely on instrumental measurements of low-stress me-
implying that there may legitimately be differences in chanical and surface properties.
assessments between individuals.
The investigations we present in this paper have
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
shown that there exists a common notion of the handle
of men’s suiting fabrics within national panels of expert We are greatly indebted to the many judges from
judges drawn from the textile and clothing industries the textile and clothing industries of eight countries for
of Japan, Australia, New Zealand, India, the U.S.A., their invaluable cooperation and participation in the
the P.R.C., and Hong Kong/Taiwan. The strength of international fabric handle survey reported in this pa-
this common notion is greater, i.e., there are fewer in- per. We also acknowledge with sincere thanks the con-
dividual differences, for the handle of the winter fabrics tributions made by the national coordinators of the
than for the summer fabrics. fabric handle survey listed in the appendix to this paper.
There is a strong commonality of handle preferences We would like to thank Dr. R. C. Dhingra for his help-
for the winter fabrics as demonstrated by the seven ful suggestions and Mr. J. Galea for his valuable tech-
national panels. Subtle underlying national preference nical assistance. We also acknowledge the financial
have also been isolated in the handle assessments of support provided for this work by the Australian Wool
these fabrics. The situation is different when we con- Corporation from the Wool Research Trust Fund.

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 732

.
Appendix how close to their ultimate consumers the expert judges
were in their assessments of fabric handle.
DETAILS OF 1NTERNATIONAL FABRIC
The selection of a final panel of judges to represent
DANDLE SURVEY
the handle preferences of a particular country was made
Aims
d
of Survey on the basis of the correlation of each judge’s handle

There were two particular aims of the international
survey: to establish whether or not there exists an
agreed-upoh concept, or concepts, of fabric handle for
men’s suitings, or more specifically, whether panels of
judges assessed the handle of two series of men’s suit-
ings, one of winter fabrics and the other of summer
fabrics, in a similar manner; and to ascertain whether
panels ofjudges with experience in the textile or cloth-
ing industries, from different countries and with dif-
ferent cultural backgrounds, rank fabric handle in a
similar manner.
National Coordinators
We obtained the cooperation in the nominated
countries outside Australia from people well placed to
perform the survey in a rigorous scientific manner.
These national coordinators, to whom we are extremely
grateful are Professor S. Kawabata, Kyoto University,
Japan: Dr. G. A. Camaby, Wool Research Organisation
of New Zealand; Professor V. B. Gupta, Indian Institute
of Technology, Dehli; Dr. R. C. Dhingra, Department
assessments with those of the mean assessments of his
national panel. In this manner, seven national panels
were assembled, each consisting of the eight judges
whose handle preferences most closely matched the
mean assessments of their national groups.
Fabrics
The 214 winter and 156 summer fabrics used in the
trial were all produced commercially. These two sets
of fabrics were chosen to be representative of suiting
fabrics available on the market, and to be of such a
number that each fabric in a set could be assessed by
each judge.
Table AI provides a brief summary of the two sets
of fabrics used in the winter and summer surveys. A
complete description of the fabrics is provided else-
where [ 15 ] . Inspection of Table AI highlights the pre-
dominately pure wool worsted and wool/synthetic
worsted nature of the fabrics. The great diversities of
fabric structure and surface finish in the winter samples
are also evident within that set. -

of Textile Technology, University of New South Wales

(India); Dr. P. Brown, University of Minnesota TABLE AI. Commercially produced fabrics used in handle survey.
(U.S.A.); and Professor Chen Wen Xiang, China Tex-
tile University, Shanghai; Professor Kung Fan Chao,
Tianjin College of Engineering, Tianjin, People’s Re-
public of China (P.R.C.).
Judging Panels
Independent sets of expert judges were selected from
a variety of areas within the textile and clothing in-
dustries to represent each of the seven nominated
countries. The 17 expert Australian judges were drawn
from the following areas of these industries: fabric de-
signing (seven judges, including two with marketing
and two with quality control responsibilities ), finishing
(two judges), clothing manufacture (three judges, in-
cluding one with retailing responsibilities), merchan-
dising (two judges), marketing (one judge), and fabric
research and development (two judges). The six other
*
sets of expert judges had a similar mix of background Includes pure wool, pure cashmere, cashmere/wool, and cash-
b
and experience, with the following total numbers: 12 mere/synthetic blends. Barathea and knitted constructions.

Japanese, 13 New Zealanders, 15 Indians, 15 U.S.; 16

Chinese (P.R.C.); and 12 Hong Kong/Taiwanese.
In this trial, we also used another set of judges con- Survey Design
sisting of eight Australians with no particular experi- In the execution of the survey each judge was asked
ence in these industries (consumer judges) to establish to assess 20 X 10 cm samples of each fabric. They were

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told to judge the fabrics following their country’s base
and their own definitions of &dquo;good&dquo; handle, but the
effect of fashion, color, and pattern was excluded so
that only fabric handle was judged. The grading of
&dquo;good&dquo; handle is as shown in the rating scale set out
in Table I of this paper.
The large number of fabrics to be assessed and the
requirement that each judge had to assess each fabric
necessitated that a rating scale be used as the means
of assessing fabric handle, rather than a paired com-
parison technique as recommended by Howorth and
Oliver. The rating scale given in Table I is of the type
recommended by Sheppard [ 19] on the basis of psy-
chological investigations.
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