A call for policy guidance on psychometric testing in doping control in sport

Abstract

One of the fundamental challenges in anti-doping is identifying athletes who use, or are at risk of using, prohibited performance enhancing substances. The growing trend to employ a forensic approach to doping control aims to integrate information from social sciences (e.g., psychology of doping) into organised intelligence to protect clean sport. Beyond the foreseeable consequences of a positive identification as a doping user, this task is further complicated by the discrepancy between what constitutes a doping offence in the World Anti-Doping Code and operationalized in doping research. Whilst psychology plays an important role in developing our understanding of doping behaviour in order to inform intervention and prevention, its contribution to the array of doping diagnostic tools is still in its infancy. In both research and forensic settings, we must acknowledge that (1) socially desirable responding confounds self-reported psychometric test results and (2) that the cognitive complexity surrounding test performance means that the response–time based measures and the lie detector tests for revealing concealed life-events (e.g., doping use) are prone to produce false or non-interpretable outcomes in field settings. Differences in social-cognitive characteristics of doping behaviour that are tested at group level (doping users vs. non-users) cannot be extrapolated to individuals; nor these psychometric measures used for individual diagnostics. In this paper, we present a position statement calling for policy guidance on appropriate use of psychometric assessments in the pursuit of clean sport. We argue that, to date, both self-reported and response-time based psychometric tests for doping have been designed,tested and validated to explore how athletes feel and think about doping in order to develop a better understanding of doping behaviour, not to establish evidence for doping. A false ‘positive’ psychological profile for doping affects not only the individual ‘clean’ athlete but also their entourage, their organisation and sport itself. The proposed policy guidance aims to protect the global athletic community against social, ethical and legal consequences from potential misuse of psychological tests, including erroneous or incompetent applications as forensic diagnostic tools in both practice and research

Health Psychological Constructs as Predictors of Doping Susceptibility in Adolescent Athletes

“…By definition, it would not be appropriate to predict actual doping behaviour in individual cases for example based on high values of fear of failure. In this regard and in agreement with Petroczi et al (45), the authors would like to stress that psychological concepts can contribute to understanding doping behaviour in order to inform intervention; but the development of diagnostic tools based on these concepts is still in its infancy. The study corroborates the predictive value of classical psychological constructs in doping research, initially analyzed in view of adult athletes, also for adolescents’ doping susceptibility.…”

Substâncias Farmacológicas E O Doping Esportivo

“…O seu nível no esporte e o corpo definido representa para a sociedade conteporânea qualidades positivas (KREMENIK et al, 2007). O atleta que utiliza esteroide ou outras substâncias ilegais ao se idealizar, cria-se um padrão inatingível para a sociedade, no entanto sua saúde pode estar comprometida (PETRÓCZI et al, 2015). Segundo Almeida, Gutierrez e Gutierrez (2016) o doping é tão antigo quanto o esporte, e sempre que houver competição esportiva que tenha regras, haverá pessoas procurando encontrar a interpretação das regras que se beneficie ou facilmente tentando trapaciá-las.…”

Annual banned‐substance review: analytical approaches in human sports drug testing

“…Multi‐analyte test methods, predominantly based on conventional chromatographic‐mass spectrometric systems, continued to be the state‐of‐the‐art in doping controls after having undergone a transition from ‘drug‐class dictated’ to ‘instrumentation‐driven’ analytical assays more than a decade ago . Further, the prevalence of anti‐doping rule violations as reported in recent survey studies contributed to concerns about considerable numbers of doped athletes remaining undetected, while psychometric testing as forensic diagnostic tool for individuals is, to date, not a recommended analytical option …”

“…[36,37] Further, the prevalence of anti-doping rule violations as reported in recent survey studies [38] contributed to concerns about considerable numbers of doped athletes remaining undetected, while psychometric testing as forensic diagnostic tool for individuals is, to date, not a recommended analytical option. [39] Non-approved substances…”