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PPR
Private Practice Research
An institute for dental practice valuation & ownership

Methodology

How Private Practice Research is produced.

Private Practice Research is the federal-data-anchored research institute for U.S. dental practice economics. Five standards apply to every publication: independence, federal-data anchoring, original-research datasets, validation with disconfirmation, and the PPR Certified mark.

PPR’s research methodology integrates federal provider records, federal acquisition-financing records, manufacturer-payment disclosures, dental-board licensure records, peer-reviewed academic citations, public-company disclosures, and continuous industry-ecosystem monitoring into a single evidence framework.

Independence

Private Practice Research holds zero commercial relationships with dental brokers, dental service organizations, transition advisory firms, or industry consultants whose business outcomes depend on the publications studied. The institute does not list practices, represent buyers or sellers, or collect referral fees. Operating costs are covered by private contributions from individual dental practitioners; reviewers and contributors with a material interest in a publication recuse themselves and the recusal is recorded.

PPR Certified

PPR Certified

PPR Certified marks publications that meet the standards above. The Methodology Review Board signs the methodology under which any PPR Certified figure is published. Numbers that do not clear those standards are not PPR Certified.

Source taxonomy

The institute draws on a structured taxonomy of source classes. Every publication discloses which classes it draws on. The institute prioritizes federal-authority datasets and named primary sources, with industry aggregates cited as cross-validation.

Primary federal-authority data

Original Private Practice Research datasets

Professional-association data

Industry transaction aggregates (cross-validation only)

The aggregates below are cited where their published methodologies are disclosed. The institute does not treat any single advisory-firm aggregate as a standalone primary source; each is cross-validated against federal-authority financing data (SBA 7(a)) and the institute’s own transaction-tracking datasets at point of use.

Practice operations and benchmarking

Peer-reviewed and policy literature

Primary qualitative inputs

Licensed institutional datasets (forthcoming)

The institute will, where the research question warrants, acquire licensed institutional datasets under research-use agreements. Acquired datasets are listed by name and license terms in the publications that draw on them. The institute does not publish from any dataset acquired under terms that prohibit independent re-publication of derived findings.

Validation and disconfirmation

Every numeric claim is verified against its primary source within the same paragraph or table before editorial review. Findings are triangulated across at least three independent series where coverage permits; where two reputable series disagree, both are reported with the spread noted. Each publication includes a section identifying what evidence would refute its central claim. A claim that cannot in principle be refuted by any conceivable evidence is treated as a non-finding, regardless of how confidently it appears elsewhere. The Editor of Record signs the draft with the standing sign-off: I have read this publication in full and can defend every claim in a public conversation.

Forthcoming

The Methodology Review Board is in formation; founding-member appointments will be announced as they are seated. Five quantitative indices — Practice Concentration, Valuation Benchmark, Labor Cost, Scarcity Premium, and Transition Volume — are specified under the PPR Methodology with first publications targeted for Q3 2026. External quarterly review of one randomly selected published article begins with the Q4 2026 publication cycle.

Citation, corrections, and version history

Every publication carries a persistent edition identifier, a suggested citation in academic format, ScholarlyArticle JSON-LD, and a canonical URL that does not change after publication. Errors of fact are corrected in-line on the affected publication with a dated note; material methodology revisions trigger a versioned republication with the prior version preserved at its original URL.