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Doping knowledge, attitudes, and practices of Ugandan athletes’: a cross-sectional study
BACKGROUND: Despite the development of advanced drug testing systems, both deliberate and inadvertent doping in sports is increasing in elite, amateur and school sports. As a result, alternative approaches that seek to influence an athlete’s attitudes are needed to address the growing doping concern...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4579610/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26395767 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13011-015-0033-2 |
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author | Muwonge, Haruna Zavuga, Robert Kabenge, Peninnah Aligawesa |
author_facet | Muwonge, Haruna Zavuga, Robert Kabenge, Peninnah Aligawesa |
author_sort | Muwonge, Haruna |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Despite the development of advanced drug testing systems, both deliberate and inadvertent doping in sports is increasing in elite, amateur and school sports. As a result, alternative approaches that seek to influence an athlete’s attitudes are needed to address the growing doping concerns that threaten both the health and well being of the athlete as well as the legitimacy of the sport. Therefore, the current study set out to establish the doping attitudes, knowledge and practices of professional Ugandan athletes, gathering information that may guide the design of more efficient doping prevention programs. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional study of 384 professional Ugandan athletes from four contact team sports (basketball, football, handball and rugby) and two individual sports (athletics and cycling). An Interviewer administered questionnaire used contained; questions about the doping behavior, the performance enhancement attitude scale (PEAS), and doping use belief (DUB) statements. RESULTS: Approximately 60 % of the athletes reported familiarity with information on doping and that most of this information came from fellow colleagues (41.9 %), individual or team coaches (29.7 %) or the media (15.6 %). However, nearly 80 % of these athletes could not correctly define doping. The overall mean PEAS score, a measure of doping attitudes, for all study participants was 39.8 ± 14.8. Female athletes (PEAS: 41.1 ± 15.1), athletes with a prior doping history (PEAS: 44.1 ± 15.6) and athletes from the sport of athletics (PEAS: 56.6 ± 17.4) had higher mean PEAS scores than their respective counterparts. Regarding doping behaviors/practices, 9.3 % of the study participants had been offered a doping agent at some point, although only 3.9 % of the athletes acknowledged recent use. CONCLUSIONS: The confessed use of doping agents in this study was low, which may suggest that fewer athletes use doping agents in Uganda. However, there is still an urgent need for educational anti-doping programs to address the knowledge gaps observed amongst athletes in this study. Modifying the existing Physical education curriculum for inclusion of more content about doping in sport could provide the basis for doping prevention programs amongst amateur athletes in Ugandan primary and secondary schools. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13011-015-0033-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4579610 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-45796102015-09-24 Doping knowledge, attitudes, and practices of Ugandan athletes’: a cross-sectional study Muwonge, Haruna Zavuga, Robert Kabenge, Peninnah Aligawesa Subst Abuse Treat Prev Policy Research BACKGROUND: Despite the development of advanced drug testing systems, both deliberate and inadvertent doping in sports is increasing in elite, amateur and school sports. As a result, alternative approaches that seek to influence an athlete’s attitudes are needed to address the growing doping concerns that threaten both the health and well being of the athlete as well as the legitimacy of the sport. Therefore, the current study set out to establish the doping attitudes, knowledge and practices of professional Ugandan athletes, gathering information that may guide the design of more efficient doping prevention programs. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional study of 384 professional Ugandan athletes from four contact team sports (basketball, football, handball and rugby) and two individual sports (athletics and cycling). An Interviewer administered questionnaire used contained; questions about the doping behavior, the performance enhancement attitude scale (PEAS), and doping use belief (DUB) statements. RESULTS: Approximately 60 % of the athletes reported familiarity with information on doping and that most of this information came from fellow colleagues (41.9 %), individual or team coaches (29.7 %) or the media (15.6 %). However, nearly 80 % of these athletes could not correctly define doping. The overall mean PEAS score, a measure of doping attitudes, for all study participants was 39.8 ± 14.8. Female athletes (PEAS: 41.1 ± 15.1), athletes with a prior doping history (PEAS: 44.1 ± 15.6) and athletes from the sport of athletics (PEAS: 56.6 ± 17.4) had higher mean PEAS scores than their respective counterparts. Regarding doping behaviors/practices, 9.3 % of the study participants had been offered a doping agent at some point, although only 3.9 % of the athletes acknowledged recent use. CONCLUSIONS: The confessed use of doping agents in this study was low, which may suggest that fewer athletes use doping agents in Uganda. However, there is still an urgent need for educational anti-doping programs to address the knowledge gaps observed amongst athletes in this study. Modifying the existing Physical education curriculum for inclusion of more content about doping in sport could provide the basis for doping prevention programs amongst amateur athletes in Ugandan primary and secondary schools. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13011-015-0033-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2015-09-22 /pmc/articles/PMC4579610/ /pubmed/26395767 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13011-015-0033-2 Text en © Muwonge et al. 2015 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Muwonge, Haruna Zavuga, Robert Kabenge, Peninnah Aligawesa Doping knowledge, attitudes, and practices of Ugandan athletes’: a cross-sectional study |
title | Doping knowledge, attitudes, and practices of Ugandan athletes’: a cross-sectional study |
title_full | Doping knowledge, attitudes, and practices of Ugandan athletes’: a cross-sectional study |
title_fullStr | Doping knowledge, attitudes, and practices of Ugandan athletes’: a cross-sectional study |
title_full_unstemmed | Doping knowledge, attitudes, and practices of Ugandan athletes’: a cross-sectional study |
title_short | Doping knowledge, attitudes, and practices of Ugandan athletes’: a cross-sectional study |
title_sort | doping knowledge, attitudes, and practices of ugandan athletes’: a cross-sectional study |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4579610/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26395767 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13011-015-0033-2 |
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