Agreement between weight bearing and non-weight bearing joint position replication tasks at the knee and hip

Peak joint angles assumed during the stance phase of running may indicate a runner's ability to sense limb position in space. Joint position sense can be assessed through weight bearing and non-weight bearing tasks. The purpose of this investigation was to determine if weight bearing and non-weight bearing knee and hip joint replication tasks elicited similar joint position sense test results. Absolute replication error was measured during sagittal plane knee and frontal plane hip conditions on 23 healthy runners. Three-dimensional kinematics was recorded during running. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) determined agreement between the two measures of joint position sense. Pearson's correlation coefficients measured the relationship between hip and knee absolute error and peak joint angles during running. Despite similar mean absolute error, ICCs indicated low agreement between weight bearing and non-weight bearing conditions at each joint. The results indicate the tests are not interchangeable. Absolute error for non-weight bearing hip replication was correlated with peak stance hip adduction during running. Weight bearing and non-weight bearing joint position sense tasks within the knee and hip joints measure joint position sense differently. Therefore, a task that is relevant to the activity of interest should be selected to measure joint position sense.