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Confounding factors in home use tests: A critical review and methodological application

  • Elena Barzizza
  • Riccardo Ceccato
  • Luigi Salmaso
  • Silvia Villanova

Home Use Tests (HUTs), a common method for evaluating consumer products in real-life settings, are widely adopted by companies to assess product acceptability under normal living conditions. However, the validity and generalisability of HUT results can be compromised by confounding variables—external factors unrelated to the product that influence consumer responses. This literature review examines the main methodological approaches used to identify, control, or adjust for confounding factors in HUT data, reflecting on the methodological challenges and strategies discussed in recent research. In the final section, we critically apply one of the identified methods, based on survey weight recalibration, to new consumer data from a company-led HUT study. This application illustrates how changes in the distribution of a confounding variable within a hypothetical target population can affect product liking scores.

  • Keywords:
  • confounders,
  • survey,
  • HUT,
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Elena Barzizza

University of Padua, Italy - ORCID: 0000-0002-6389-887X

Riccardo Ceccato

University of Padua, Italy - ORCID: 0000-0002-8629-8439

Luigi Salmaso

University of Padua, Italy - ORCID: 0000-0001-6501-1585

Silvia Villanova

University of Padua, Italy - ORCID: 0009-0006-8654-8684

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  • Pagine: 57-62

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Informazioni sul capitolo

Titolo del capitolo

Confounding factors in home use tests: A critical review and methodological application

Autori

Elena Barzizza, Riccardo Ceccato, Luigi Salmaso, Silvia Villanova

Lingua

Inglese

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-1062-1.12

Opera sottoposta a peer review

Anno di pubblicazione

2026

Copyright

© 2026 Author(s)

Licenza d'uso

CC BY 4.0

Licenza dei metadati

CC0 1.0

Informazioni bibliografiche

Titolo del libro

Data, Statistics and AI for Well-Being of People and Organisations

Curatori

Luigi Fabbris, Alberto Franci, Pietro Renzi

Opera sottoposta a peer review

Numero di pagine

420

Anno di pubblicazione

2026

Copyright

© 2026 Author(s)

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CC BY 4.0

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CC0 1.0

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Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-1062-1

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979-12-215-1061-4

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