Individuals who met all inclusion criteria were invited for orientation, at which time they agreed to participate in either a self-massage or to be assigned to a wait-list group. During orientation, all consent forms, baseline assessment outcome surveys, and knee range of motion (ROM) were obtained from each participant.
 
Forty participants, women and men with knee OA, were recruited and then randomly assigned either to the intervention group (n = 21), which was designed to evaluate effects of a self-massage protocol, or the control group (n = 19), the members of which continued their usual care returning only for assessments. We verified that with our results (small standard deviations), this did not affect the statistical validity of a two-tailed test of intervention compared to no intervention, at 80% power.
The randomization was assigned using a uniform distribution. Logically, because the current study relies on self-treatment, participants could not be blinded to group assignment. Following randomization, the participants were notified and the study began the following week. The random selection of the wait-list control group was large enough for statistical analysis. One out of the nineteen (or 5%) participants in this group dropped out of the study (see Figure 1).