Young athletes' awareness and monitoring of anti‐doping in daily life: Does motivation matter?

Abstract

This study was a preliminarily investigation into the prevention of unintentional doping on the basis of self-determination theory (SDT). Specifically, we examined the relationship between athletes' motives for doping avoidance and their behavior when offered an unfamiliar food product. Participants were young Australian athletes (n = 410) that were offered a free lollipop prior to completing a questionnaire. It was noted whether participants refused to take or eat the lollipop and whether they read the ingredients of the lollipop. The questionnaire assessed autonomous and controlled forms of motivation, amotivation, doping intentions, and adherence regarding doping avoidance behaviors. The results showed that young athletes who adopted controlled reasons to avoid doping in sport (e.g., not getting caught) tended to report higher adherence to behaviors related to avoiding and monitoring banned substances, whereas those who adopted autonomous reasons (e.g., anti-doping being consistent with life goals) appeared to be more willing to read the ingredients of the provided food. The significant interaction effect between autonomous and controlled motivation indicated that autonomous motivation was more predictive to doping intention for athletes with low controlled motivation. It is concluded that SDT may help understand the motivational processes of the prevention of unintentional doping in sport.

What if it really was an accident? The psychology of unintentional doping

“…We and others have reported that the awareness of, and intention or adherence to avoiding unintentional doping is related to a number of psychological variables such as motivation, social-cognitive variables and beliefs, and self-control 2 6 8 9. Extending this research would help sport governing bodies, antidoping agencies and sport professionals, to establish essential training and social environmental conditions that empower athletes to self-monitor and act appropriately to help prevent unintentional doping.…”

“…However athletes may dope unintentionally because they are not aware that food, drinks, supplements, or medications may contain doping substances 2 3. Therefore, one of the key antidoping strategies of WADA, apart from doping control, is to enhance athletes’ antidoping awareness and their capacity to avoid unintentional doping.…”

Self-Control Self-Regulation, and Doping in Sport: A Test of the Strength-Energy Model

“…Moreover, other confounding effects such as participants' prior experience, knowledge, and belief of antidoping were likely to elevate the error variances of the study. Using lollipops as a behavioral means to evaluate preventive action toward unintended doping (Chan, Donovan, et al, 2014) might also be vulnerable to the influences of socially desirable responses and individual discrepan cies in food preference. Future studies may adopt more objective psychological measures (e.g., performance on self-regulatory tasks, implicit association test for implicit doping attitudes) and randomized factorial experiments to test the role of self-control on doping intention, aware ness, and behavior.…”

“…This study used a dataset reported in previous studies Chan, Donovan, et al, 2014; based on a convenience sample of athletes that were used to test different hypotheses.…”

“…Similarly, recent research on antidoping in sport found that even athletes with strong intentions and high commitment to avoiding doping are required to engage in effort ful, conscious deliberation to avoid doping or prevent of unintended doping Chan, Donovan, et al, 2014;Chan, Hardcastle, et al, 2014).…”