The Effect of Knee Extension Angle on Knee Joint Position Sense Between Genders

The purpose of this study was to examine the differences in knee JPS between males and females at both 30 and 60 degrees of knee extension in the dominant leg of healthy young adults. 46 subjects (22 males, 24 females) participated in the study; aged 19-25 years old, average height 172.7±8.4 cm, and average mass 71.2±12.9 kg. The data collection consisted of three position reproduction tasks with two different target angles for a total of six randomized trials. The difference in reproduction angle was recorded and analyzed as an absolute error between position and reposition. A 2x2 mixed analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to analyze the difference between genders as well as knee extension angle. The ANOVA revealed that the 30 degree position had a significantly greater absolute reposition error than the 60 degree position (p = 0.007). There was no significant difference in JPS between genders (p = 0.225). Furthermore, there was no presence of an interaction effect between main effects and therefore there was no need to perform post-hoc tests. These results indicate that there is no difference in JPS between genders at positions within the knee’s mid-range of motion. For both males and females, the 30 degree position had greater accuracy than the 60 degree position. Different results may have been seen at a position closer to maximum extension where more tension is placed onto the ACL