Gill 2020
About this reference
Gill et al. (2020) measured active shoulder flexion, abduction, and external rotation using a digital inclinometer in 2,404 Australian adults across 14 five-year age brackets (20–24 through 85+). This is the largest normative dataset for shoulder ROM in community-dwelling Western adults. Data are presented as mean (SD) and median (IQR) separately for left and right shoulders. This site uses right-shoulder data as primary, since most participants are right-hand dominant and right-shoulder norms are most commonly used in clinical screening.
Known limitations
- Australian community sample; may not fully generalise to other Western populations, though large n reduces selection bias.
- Oldest bracket (85+) had only n=10 per sex and is excluded from this site's norms.
- P5 and P95 are estimated from mean plus or minus 1.645 x SD assuming approximate normality; P25, P50, and P75 use native IQR values from the paper.
- For young women in external rotation, the anatomical ceiling of 90 degrees constrains P95 (raw normal-distribution estimate 90-98 degrees); reported P95 is capped at 90 degrees.