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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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Autores principales: Muwonge, Haruna, Zavuga, Robert, Kabenge, Peninnah Aligawesa
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2015
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.
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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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