Cargando…

Virtue or Pretense? Looking behind Self-Declared Innocence in Doping

BACKGROUND: Social science studies of doping practices in sport rely predominantly on self-reports. Studies of psychoactive drug use indicate that self-reporting is characterised by under-reporting. Likewise doping practice is likely to be equally under-reported, if not more so. This calls for more...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Petróczi, Andrea, Aidman, Eugene V., Hussain, Iltaf, Deshmukh, Nawed, Nepusz, Tamás, Uvacsek, Martina, Tóth, Miklós, Barker, James, Naughton, Declan P.
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2010
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2864761/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20463978
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0010457
_version_ 1782180798303043584
author Petróczi, Andrea
Aidman, Eugene V.
Hussain, Iltaf
Deshmukh, Nawed
Nepusz, Tamás
Uvacsek, Martina
Tóth, Miklós
Barker, James
Naughton, Declan P.
author_facet Petróczi, Andrea
Aidman, Eugene V.
Hussain, Iltaf
Deshmukh, Nawed
Nepusz, Tamás
Uvacsek, Martina
Tóth, Miklós
Barker, James
Naughton, Declan P.
author_sort Petróczi, Andrea
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Social science studies of doping practices in sport rely predominantly on self-reports. Studies of psychoactive drug use indicate that self-reporting is characterised by under-reporting. Likewise doping practice is likely to be equally under-reported, if not more so. This calls for more sophisticated methods for such reporting and for independent, objective validation of its results. The aims of this study were: i) to contrast self-reported doping use with objective results from chemical hair analysis and ii) to investigate the influence of the discrepancy on doping attitudes, social projection, descriptive norms and perceived pressure to use doping. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A doping attitudes questionnaire was developed and combined with a response latency-based implicit association test and hair sample analysis for key doping substances in 14 athletes selected from a larger sample (N = 82) to form contrast comparison groups. Results indicate that patterns of group differences in social projection, explicit attitude about and perceived pressure to use doping, vary depending on whether the user and non-user groups are defined by self-report or objectively verified through hair analysis. Thus, self-confessed users scored higher on social projection, explicit attitude to doping and perceived pressure. However, when a doping substance was detected in the hair of an athlete who denied doping use, their self-report evidenced extreme social desirability (negative attitude, low projection and low perceived pressure) and contrasted sharply with a more positive estimate of their implicit doping attitude. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Hair analysis for performance enhancing substances has shown considerable potential in validating athletes' doping attitude estimations and admissions of use. Results not only confirm the need for improved self-report methodology for future research in socially-sensitive domains but also indicate where the improvements are likely to come from: as chemical validation remains expensive, a more realistic promise for large scale studies and online data collection efforts is held by measures of implicit social cognition.
format Text
id pubmed-2864761
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2010
publisher Public Library of Science
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-28647612010-05-12 Virtue or Pretense? Looking behind Self-Declared Innocence in Doping Petróczi, Andrea Aidman, Eugene V. Hussain, Iltaf Deshmukh, Nawed Nepusz, Tamás Uvacsek, Martina Tóth, Miklós Barker, James Naughton, Declan P. PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: Social science studies of doping practices in sport rely predominantly on self-reports. Studies of psychoactive drug use indicate that self-reporting is characterised by under-reporting. Likewise doping practice is likely to be equally under-reported, if not more so. This calls for more sophisticated methods for such reporting and for independent, objective validation of its results. The aims of this study were: i) to contrast self-reported doping use with objective results from chemical hair analysis and ii) to investigate the influence of the discrepancy on doping attitudes, social projection, descriptive norms and perceived pressure to use doping. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A doping attitudes questionnaire was developed and combined with a response latency-based implicit association test and hair sample analysis for key doping substances in 14 athletes selected from a larger sample (N = 82) to form contrast comparison groups. Results indicate that patterns of group differences in social projection, explicit attitude about and perceived pressure to use doping, vary depending on whether the user and non-user groups are defined by self-report or objectively verified through hair analysis. Thus, self-confessed users scored higher on social projection, explicit attitude to doping and perceived pressure. However, when a doping substance was detected in the hair of an athlete who denied doping use, their self-report evidenced extreme social desirability (negative attitude, low projection and low perceived pressure) and contrasted sharply with a more positive estimate of their implicit doping attitude. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Hair analysis for performance enhancing substances has shown considerable potential in validating athletes' doping attitude estimations and admissions of use. Results not only confirm the need for improved self-report methodology for future research in socially-sensitive domains but also indicate where the improvements are likely to come from: as chemical validation remains expensive, a more realistic promise for large scale studies and online data collection efforts is held by measures of implicit social cognition. Public Library of Science 2010-05-05 /pmc/articles/PMC2864761/ /pubmed/20463978 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0010457 Text en Petróczi et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Petróczi, Andrea
Aidman, Eugene V.
Hussain, Iltaf
Deshmukh, Nawed
Nepusz, Tamás
Uvacsek, Martina
Tóth, Miklós
Barker, James
Naughton, Declan P.
Virtue or Pretense? Looking behind Self-Declared Innocence in Doping
title Virtue or Pretense? Looking behind Self-Declared Innocence in Doping
title_full Virtue or Pretense? Looking behind Self-Declared Innocence in Doping
title_fullStr Virtue or Pretense? Looking behind Self-Declared Innocence in Doping
title_full_unstemmed Virtue or Pretense? Looking behind Self-Declared Innocence in Doping
title_short Virtue or Pretense? Looking behind Self-Declared Innocence in Doping
title_sort virtue or pretense? looking behind self-declared innocence in doping
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2864761/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20463978
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0010457
work_keys_str_mv AT petrocziandrea virtueorpretenselookingbehindselfdeclaredinnocenceindoping
AT aidmaneugenev virtueorpretenselookingbehindselfdeclaredinnocenceindoping
AT hussainiltaf virtueorpretenselookingbehindselfdeclaredinnocenceindoping
AT deshmukhnawed virtueorpretenselookingbehindselfdeclaredinnocenceindoping
AT nepusztamas virtueorpretenselookingbehindselfdeclaredinnocenceindoping
AT uvacsekmartina virtueorpretenselookingbehindselfdeclaredinnocenceindoping
AT tothmiklos virtueorpretenselookingbehindselfdeclaredinnocenceindoping
AT barkerjames virtueorpretenselookingbehindselfdeclaredinnocenceindoping
AT naughtondeclanp virtueorpretenselookingbehindselfdeclaredinnocenceindoping