Peds in Sports
“What are the factors that influence collegiate athletes to take Performance Enhancing Drugs”
Research Methods II
SFM 6691
July, 22nd, 2012
Introduction Exploring the factors of performance enhancing drugs (PED) used among collegiate athletes, gives sport performance psychology and researchers an opportunity to investigate the multiple factors involved in an athlete’s decision making process. Performance enhancement is a natural and essential element of competitive sports. Except for nutritional supplement contamination, accidental use of taking PED is highly unlikely. Researching the vast array of factors, attitudes, and doping behaviors that users consider when making their choice to use, will help provide informative, in depth literature on exactly which factors play the most prominent role in an athlete choosing to use PED. The seriousness of PED use by athletes is reflected by the recent increase in a global, organized effort to combat doping in sports. Detection of PED use was based on organizational structures and standard operating procedures that were in place to ensure compliance with anti- doping regulations (Houlihan, 2002). Detection relies on testing, which has been increasingly problematic in highly competitive and elite sports. Haugen (2004) argued that the imposition of making testing effective would require the volume of conducted tests and testing sanctions to both be increased significantly, potentially to levels that are practically non-feasible. New technologies that deal with the development of undetectable methods and the detection of new methods of PED have lead to an increase in costs. Also, tests are not available for every banned drug and method. “Providing insight to which factors play the largest role in an athlete’s choice to use, would help suggests ways to create and implement more cost-effective and efficient PED tests for prevention” (Alaranta et al., 2006). The factors can be
Research Methods II
SFM 6691
July, 22nd, 2012
Introduction Exploring the factors of performance enhancing drugs (PED) used among collegiate athletes, gives sport performance psychology and researchers an opportunity to investigate the multiple factors involved in an athlete’s decision making process. Performance enhancement is a natural and essential element of competitive sports. Except for nutritional supplement contamination, accidental use of taking PED is highly unlikely. Researching the vast array of factors, attitudes, and doping behaviors that users consider when making their choice to use, will help provide informative, in depth literature on exactly which factors play the most prominent role in an athlete choosing to use PED. The seriousness of PED use by athletes is reflected by the recent increase in a global, organized effort to combat doping in sports. Detection of PED use was based on organizational structures and standard operating procedures that were in place to ensure compliance with anti- doping regulations (Houlihan, 2002). Detection relies on testing, which has been increasingly problematic in highly competitive and elite sports. Haugen (2004) argued that the imposition of making testing effective would require the volume of conducted tests and testing sanctions to both be increased significantly, potentially to levels that are practically non-feasible. New technologies that deal with the development of undetectable methods and the detection of new methods of PED have lead to an increase in costs. Also, tests are not available for every banned drug and method. “Providing insight to which factors play the largest role in an athlete’s choice to use, would help suggests ways to create and implement more cost-effective and efficient PED tests for prevention” (Alaranta et al., 2006). The factors can be
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