For general dentists who were owners of a practice, the average net income in 2010 was $198,490, and the average net income among all specialists in private practice was $304,270. The mean net earnings data (Table 5) for prosthodontists, owner prosthodontists, and solo prosthodontists in 2010 are all greater than the estimates for all general dentists and owner general dentists but less than the average of $313,620 estimated for all specialists in the ADA briefing. Similar to other industries and Staurosporine clinical trial professions, average net earnings are used as one indicator of the economic health of the participants

in the industry. When examining the net earnings results based on the survey responses, however, the reliability of those estimates should also be examined. Since we did not ask every prosthodontist in private practice in the United States, there is a question about how

well the estimates from the sample reflect the average income of all prosthodontists. The reliability of the mean net income estimates calculated from the survey results is influenced by the size of the respondent sample and click here the size of the standard deviation of net income (i.e., the amount of variation in income reported by the prosthodontists). The larger the sample size and the smaller the amount of variation in the reported income, the greater the reliability of the estimates from the survey data. The calculation of a 95% confidence interval is one method

used to examine the reliability of the mean net earnings estimates. The confidence interval is computed as the mean net income “plus and minus” a factor that reflects the size of the standard deviation of net earnings and the size of the respondent sample.[12] The 95% confidence interval was calculated for the mean net earnings estimates in Table 5 and/or the difference in mean net earnings for 2010 and 2007. Results are shown in Table 7. The narrower the 95% confidence intervals, the greater the reliability that the calculated mean net income from the respondent sample is MCE a reliable estimate of the mean net income for all prosthodontists in private practice. The ratio of the confidence interval to the mean net income is a measure of the relative size of the confidence interval. This measure ranges from 21% to 23% in 2007, and from 29% to 33% in 2010. The “difference” in mean net earnings between 2007 and 2010 is also shown in Table 7. The results from calculating a 95% confidence interval for the “difference” indicate that: (1) the difference in mean net income per prosthodontist is statistically significant at the 10% level; (2) the difference in mean net income per owner is not statistically significant at a level of at least 10%; and (3) the difference in mean net income per solo prosthodontist is statistically significant at the 5% level.