Evaluation of bond strength of resin cements using different general-purpose statistical software packages for two-parameter Weibull statistics.

OBJECTIVES This study evaluated and compared Weibull parameters of resin bond strength values using six different general-purpose statistical software packages for two-parameter Weibull distribution. METHODS Two-hundred human teeth were randomly divided into 4 groups (n=50), prepared and bonded on dentin according to the manufacturers' instructions using the following resin cements: (i) Variolink (VAN, conventional resin cement), (ii) Panavia21 (PAN, conventional resin cement), (iii) RelyX Unicem (RXU, self-adhesive resin cement) and (iv) G-Cem (GCM, self-adhesive resin cement). Subsequently, all specimens were stored in water for 24h at 37°C. Shear bond strength was measured and the data were analyzed using Anderson-Darling goodness-of-fit (MINITAB 16) and two-parameter Weibull statistics with the following statistical software packages: Excel 2011, SPSS 19, MINITAB 16, R 2.12.1, SAS 9.1.3. and STATA 11.2 (p≤0.05). Additionally, the three-parameter Weibull was fitted using MNITAB 16. RESULTS Two-parameter Weibull calculated with MINITAB and STATA can be compared using an omnibus test and using 95% CI. In SAS only 95% CI were directly obtained from the output. R provided no estimates of 95% CI. In both SAS and R the global comparison of the characteristic bond strength among groups is provided by means of the Weibull regression. EXCEL and SPSS provided no default information about 95% CI and no significance test for the comparison of Weibull parameters among the groups. In summary, conventional resin cement VAN showed the highest Weibull modulus and characteristic bond strength. SIGNIFICANCE There are discrepancies in the Weibull statistics depending on the software package and the estimation method. The information content in the default output provided by the software packages differs to very high extent.