the assessment of fabric hand involves two major classes of variables: fabrics as stimuli with certain physical properties, and people as judges with certain traits. this research investigated the tactile sensory assessment of selected fabrics that varied in specified physical dimensions $em dash$ namely: stiffness, roughness, and thickness $em dash$ replicated in two fiber contents: cotton and polyester. in the analysis-of-variance design, physical dimensions of fabrics were taken as fixed, rather than random, variables, and judges as blocks. the subjective-hand properties were measured by polar adjectives using a 99-point certainty scale, transformed to normal deviates. sensory responses of judges to the nine pairs of polar adjectives differed significantly with respect to all four main effects: fiber content, stiffness, roughness, and thickness. 21 refs