European Test of Olfactory Capabilities

The European Test of Olfactory Capabilities (ETOC) (Thomas-Dangnin et al., 2003) or Sniffin Sticks (Hummel et al., 1997). These tests screen for olfactory impairment. The ETOC test consists of 16 blocks of four vials presented one by one to the participants. Only one vial of the four in the block contains an odorant. For each block, participants are asked to point out the odorous vial (forced-choice detection task) and then to identify the odour by choosing a name for the odour out of four proposals (forced-choice identification task). Sniffin Sticks comprises three tests of olfactory function odour threshold (n-butanol), odour discrimination (16 pairs of odorants) and odour forced-choice identification (16 common odorants). 

In a second study, a new olfactory test, the European Test of Olfactory Capabilities (ETOC), was used to assess the links between panelists health status and their general olfactory ability. 

This first study highlights several points that need to be taken into account in any sensory analysis based on olfactory tasks. Thus gender is shown to be able to influence scores in threshold and identification tasks. Cultural origin may influence scores in suprathreshold detection and identification tasks. Scores in identification tasks may also be influenced by healthy aging when corrected by detection measures. Thus it appears to be important (a) to assess and to check panelists olfactory capabilities regularly and (b) to integrate certain parameters in sensory data processing that reflect the panelists sensory sensitivity and could account for interindividual variance. For this purpose, we developed the European Test of Olfactory Capabilities. 

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