Attitudes Toward Doping and Recreational Drug Use among French Elite Student-Athletes

Abstract

This study examined attitudes toward doping among 458 French elite student-athletes (ESAs) ages 16–24, their correlates, and their relationship with cigarette, alcohol, and cannabis use. We found a consensus among ESAs concerning negative aspects of doping. A cluster analysis showed, however, that statements dealing with benefits of doping were endorsed by two significant minorities of respondents. These ESAs were more frequently older males with a lower parental academic achievement and no sporting history in their family. Recreational drug use depended on whether or not ESAs endorsed statements related to nonsporting benefits of doping. Using an analytical framework from the sociology of deviance, our findings suggest that athletes who dope themselves pursue legitimate goals with illegitimate means but justify their behavior with a legitimate rationale. Further research is needed on the nonrecreational use of recreational drugs.

Gateway to doping? Supplement use in the context of preferred competitive situations, doping attitude, beliefs, and norms

“…The use of legal and illegal performance enhancing substances (PES) permeates sport at all levels (Peretti-Watel et al 2004). Indeed, athletes in their quest to be the strongest and fastest consume unproven, potentially harmful or even banned substances.…”

Knowledge, attitude and practice on doping of Malaysian student athletes

“…The survey comprises four sections. Section A is about the sociodemographic backgrounds of the respondents [14] and section B is about their knowledge on doping [8]. Assessment of the knowledge is done based on the marks that the respondents obtain.…”

“I have never taken performance enhancing drugs and I never will”: drug discourse in the Shane Warne case

“…The sport psychology research that has been undertaken has tended to concentrate on the cognitive or behavioral aspects of drug taking (e.g., Anshel & Russell, 1997;Laure et al, 2004;Peretti-Watel et al, 2004). While other disciplines such as sociology and sport economics have examined doping in sport using interactionist approaches such as the game theoretical perspective (e.g., Breivik, 1992;Berentsen & Lengwiler, 2004), sport psychology has not.…”

“…Further, most of this research has used predominantly North American, intervarsity, or adolescent athletes cohorts (e.g., Wechsler & Davenport, 1997;Naylor et al, 2001;Peretti-Watel et al, 2004). Besides the issue of result generalization, it is often unclear in some studies whether athletes are reporting on their own or other athletes drug use, attitudes, and motivations (e.g., Anshel, 1991;Lucidi, 2004).…”

“…Conceptually, recent work using the theory of planned behavior argues that drug attitudes are poor predictors of drug behavior in athletes (Peretti-Watel et al, 2004). When considering that the motivation to take drugs is complex and peculiar to each athlete (Wright et al, 2000(Wright et al, , 2001, it is not surprising that drug attitude research is a poor predictor of future drug behavior.…”