Coach perceptions of performance enhancement in adolescence: The sport drug control model for adolescent athletes

Abstract

Aim: We qualitatively explored the Sport Drug Control Model (SDCM; Donovan, Egger, Kapernick, & Mendoza, 2002), in order to examine coaches' perceptions of adolescent athletes' attitudes and susceptibility towards doping.Methods: Eleven coaches (M = 10) from four countries, who worked in seven different sports (athletics, basketball, kayaking, racquetball, rowing, rugby league, and rugby union) were recruited to take part in semi-structured interviews. Transcribed interviews were analyzed via a three-stage inductive and deductive coding process, which allowed us to identify common themes among the participants. Results:The coaches believed that adolescents' attitudes towards doping were influenced by perceptions of threat and benefit appraisals, morality, self-esteem, legitimacy, and reference group opinion. We also identified additional factors, which included age/maturation, sport level, pressure, country of residence, and ethnicity. Conclusions:Our findings provide qualitative support for the SDCM, but also offer fresh insight into some of the nuances specific to adolescent athletes from different countries and cultures. Further research is required to test our proposed model with larger samples of adolescent athletes.

Personality traits and performance enhancing drugs: The Dark Triad and doping attitudes among competitive athletes

“…In regards to mental health, there is a two-to-four fold increased risk of suicide among athletes that have previously taken PEDs (Lindqvist et al, 2014). Despite PEDs representing a serious health threat, it appears that many athletes are unaware of the dangers that banned substances pose to their health (Nicholls et al, 2015). Understanding why athletes dope, and being able to better identify those who are more susceptible to doping, will enable governing bodies to expose at risk athletes to more intensive anti-doping education and long-term monitoring.…”

Understanding Factors Related with Cheating in Sport: What We Know and what is Worth Future Consideration

“…Moral identity is a source of motivation to behave morally. In the context of sport, it was found that athletes who have low morale tend to be more positive about cheating (Gucciardi, Jalleh, & Donovan, 2011;Jalleh, Donovan, & Jobling, 2014;Nicholls et al, 2015). Some recent studies confirmed that moral identity negatively correlated with doping likelihood (Ring, Kavussanu, & Hurst, 2018).…”

“…As sport is an achievement context, it requires some competency. According to Achievement Goal Theory (Nicholls, 1989), the pursuit of achievement is related to the display of competence and to personal perceptions of success. There are two major ways that success is defined and competence is evaluated, and these are embedded within two achievement goals: task orientation and ego orientation.…”

“…Motivational climate in the team created by the coach can be an important contributor for athlete's intentions and behaviour. Based on the Achievement Goal Theory (Nicholls, 1989), climate can be taskinvolving and ego-involving. Accordingly, a taskinvolving climate is defined by situations where the coach focuses on skill improvement, individual progress, and encourages cooperation with others, and in which every individual has an important role in the team.…”

“…The role of parents in sport is also important in many aspects in general (Harwood & Knight, 2015), and among these studies some emphasized the influence on athlete's intention to cheat and cheating in sport. Interviews with currently or previously working with adolescent athletes' coaches (Nicholls et al, 2015) showed that both parents' and coaches' attitudes towards doping influenced adolescent athletes' attitudes towards doping, both negative or positive. Also, adult athletes emphasized not only the role of coaches, but also the role of parents when talking about the causes of adolescent athletes to cheat (Šukys, Karanauskienė, & Šmigelskaitė, 2019).…”