Towards a Social Science of Drugs in Sport

Jason Mazanov

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317984535
• Topic: Medicina
• Subtopic: Sociologia

The debate around the role of drugs in sport is vibrant. There is a wealth of evidence from the hard end of science, telling us how drugs work, how drug testing works, and how many athletes have fallen foul of the system. The evidence from social science is still building momentum. For example, what makes an athlete use a performance enhancing substance? "To win" simply fails to explain the drug use behaviour we see among athletes.

This book provides a foundation for anyone trying to understand the drugs in sport problem beyond the hard science by looking at the "people factor" from different perspectives. After building a case for the social science of drugs in sport, it is examined from the ethical, sociological, economic, legal and psychological points of view. The book concludes with a definitive statement about what researchers, policy makers, sports administrators, athletes and fans can do to achieve a social science of drugs in sport that puts people firmly in the centre of the debate.

This volume was published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

Developing an agenda for social science research into drugs in sport

Jason Mazanov

School of Business, UNSW@ADFA, Canberra, Australia

This article provides a short introduction and overview to a collection of essays designed to provide a starting point in the form of a research agenda towards developing a social science of drugs in sport. It firstly addresses the paucity of social science research on the issues and then summarizes the approach taken to developing a research agenda to guide social science research into drugs in sport. This is done through describing the conceptual relationship between five pairs of essays comprising of the argument for a social science of drugs in sport (historical and overview of the development of the research agenda), developing policy (sport philosophy and sociology), implementing policy (economics and law), individual response to policy (health and educational psychology), and the research agenda (discipline specific and cosmopolitan).

There has been a massive amount of research into drugs in sport and anti-doping initiatives. A survey of the research literature demonstrates a formidable amount of medical and physical science research aimed at identifying athletes who seek advantage through banned performance-enhancing substances or methods. This represents what might be termed ‘detection-based deterrence’, or the idea that the prospect of getting caught using a prohibited substance will be enough to stop an athlete from using. While detection-based deterrence has had some success, attention is now turning to whether social science can inform ‘prevention-based deterrence’, or stopping an athlete from wanting to use prohibited substances or methods.¹

When a survey of research literature is taken across the social sciences in relation to prevention-based deterrence it reveals two important things. The first is that there is surprisingly little research, and the second is that what exists is difficult to find². In terms of what exists, there are a few unconnected studies from economics, psychology and sociology³. Thus, at the start of the twenty-first century there is surprisingly little in the way of systematic research by social scientists into performance-enhancing drug or method use by athletes.

Filling this gap in an organized way means working towards a social science of drugs in sport to answer some basic questions, such as ‘Why do athletes take drugs?’ and ‘Why do we have drugs in sport in the first place?’⁴ That is, developing a research agenda to guide the development of a social science of drugs in sport.

Development of the agenda reported in this collection was construed with two very specific aims in mind. The first was to provide an insight into how social science views drugs in sport. The second was to stimulate social science research into drugs in sport as a starting point to ask theoretically or empirically relevant questions, or provide points of contention with which to agree or disagree. Developing the agenda brought together a team of social scientists from economics, education, law, psychology, sociology and sports philosophy to outline some directions for future research from their discipline.

Structure of the agenda

Five pairs of essays make up the agenda. The first pair of essays is aimed at providing readers with grounding in the context of drugs in sport research. The first essay (Mazanov and McDermott) argues the case for developing a social science of drugs in sport using the historical evolution of the anti-doping policy. The purpose of the second essay (Mazanov) is to give readers some insight into what the contributors to the collection thought about and reflected upon when preparing their contributions. Specifically, it summarizes two workshops held to define what social science needs to do to best respond to the drugs in sport issue.

The second pair looks to explore the ideology underpinning drugs in sport research with sports philosophy and sociology. Anti-doping is the dominant ideology governing drugs in sport, presuming the role of drugs in sport is malignant and should be excised. While dominant, antidoping is just one of many potential ideologies to guide the response to drugs in sport. Philosophy and sociology ask critical questions about where such ideologies come from and whether they are worth pursuing relative to other models, exploring the existing model as only one of several possible realities. The approach taken by the essays on sport philosophy (Hemphill) and sociology (Connor) are to critically evaluate the arguments used to support the anti-doping stance. The evaluation of these arguments leads to an exploration of ideas of what sport means to individuals and to societies in general. These arguments lead to questions about what humans want for sport, and whether drugs have a role to play.

Where the essays on philosophy and sociology explored ideologies that lead to particular policies about drugs in sport, the third pair of essays take the policies as somewhat more fixed and explores what they might mean in practice. This gives rise to a consideration of both the intended and unintended consequences of such policies that might emerge. By using the rational model as one against which to speculate about reality, Sharpe's application of economic theory to drugs in sport issues provides a method for assessing whether the operationalization of different ideologies and their policies leads to the expected outcomes. Once a policy has been decided upon, the law provides a wealth of experience in designing systems that define the rules and the authority to implement those rules (Amos and Fridman). This adds another layer of sophistication to exploring the intended and unintended consequences associated with the policy implementation of various ideologies.

The fourth pair of essays looks to how individuals respond within established ideological or policy systems, using the lens of psychology. Two sub-disciplines of psychology are considered here, health (Quirk) and educational (Hanson). Health psychology takes an interest in volitional behaviour that can influence the integrity of human functioning, such as suppression of immune function from overtraining, behaviours that increase the risk of disease, or the deliberate use of drugs known to be detrimental to longevity. Educational psychology is central to a discussion of drugs in sport as one of the foundations underpinning anti-doping activity, specifically its role in developing interventions that help athletes make decisions about their drug use behaviour. The educational psychologist might look at the drugs in sport issue as one focused on ensuring athletes draw on the information available to them at the critical decision point of use or abstinence.

The final pair of essays concludes the development of the research agenda by articulating a set of research questions that cuts across discipline boundaries (cosmopolitan research), and then defines the agenda. The aim of the cosmopolitan research agenda (Mazanov) is to inspire collaboration between disciplines towards cosmopolitan, rather than multidisciplinary, work. Cosmopolitan work in this context is meant to encourage research that uses relevant ideas from a discipline because it helps explain some aspect of the drugs in sport phenomenon. The final essay in the collection (Mazanov) is intended as a stand alone statement to stimulate debate through robust and constructive examination of which ideas have merit and which need to be consigned to the dustbin of mediocrity. If the agenda can inspire researchers, policy makers or commentators to further the social science of drugs in sport, then it has achieved its purpose.

Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the Australian Government through the Anti-Doping Research Program, whose management of the project has been integral to its success. As with any such effort, many people make up the eventual success of the project. The project was given crucial momentum at its conception by Dr Anthony Millgate, Professor Stephen Mugford and Professor Peter Hall. Important contributions over the life of the project were made by Associate Professor Tim Rolfe, Dr Eugene Aidman, Mr Ken Norris, Mrs Alannah Kazlauskas and Mr Trevor O’Donnell. Professor Brian Stoddart made a significant contribution to the project with sound, measured advice. As the convenor of the project, my personal thanks go to the contributors to this collection who did much more than write, and to my family who shared the ride.

Notes

¹ BMA, Drugs in Sport.

² This is reinforced by the review of social psychological investigation of anti-doping by Backhouse et al., Attitudes, Behaviours, Knowledge and Education.

³ These papers include Berentsen and Lengwiler, ‘Fraudulent Accounting and other Doping Games’; Anshel, ‘Causes for Drug Use in Sport’; Donovan et al., ‘A Conceptual Framework for Achieving Performance Enhancing Drug Compliance in Sport’; Mazanov et al., ‘Towards an Empirical Model of Performance Enhancing Supplement Use’; Strelan and Boeckmann, ‘A New Model for Understanding Performance-enhancing Drug Use by Elite Athletes’, and ‘Why Drug Testing in Elite Sport does not Work’; Coakley, Sports in Society; and Waddington, Sport, Health and Drugs.

⁴ Answering either question with ‘to win’ is unlikely to be helpful when looking to develop, design or guide interventions.

References

Anshel, M.H. ‘Causes for Drug Use in Sport: A Survey of Intercollegiate Athletes’. Journal of Sport Behaviour14 (1991): 283–307.

Backhouse, S., J.McKenna, S.Robinson, and A.Atkin. Attitudes, Behaviours, Knowledge and Education – Drugs in Sport: Past, Present and Future. Montreal: World Anti-Doping Agency, 2007.

Berensten, A., and Y.Lengwiler. ‘Fraudulent Accounting and other Doping Games’. Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics160, no. 3 (2004): 402–15.

BMA. Drugs in Sport: The Pressure to Perform. London: BMJ Publishing Group, 2002.

Coakley, J. Sports in Society: Issues and Controversies. Sydney: McGraw-Hill, 2007.

Donovan, R.J., G.Egger, V.Kapernick, and J.Mendoza. ‘A Conceptual Framework for Achieving Performance Enhancing Drug Compliance in Sport’. Sports Medicine32, no. 4 (2002): 269–84.

Mazanov, J., A.Petroczi, J.Bingham, and A.Holloway. ‘Towards an Empirical Model of Performance Enhancing Supplement Use: A Pilot Study among High Performance UK Athletes’. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport11, no. 2 (2008): 185–90.

Strelan, P., and R.J.Boeckmann. ‘A New Model for Understanding Performance-enhancing Drug Use by Elite Athletes’. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology15 (2003): 176–83.

Strelan, P., and R.J.Boeckmann. ‘Why Drug Testing in Elite Sport does not Work: Perceptual Deterrence Theory and the Role of Personal Moral Beliefs’. Journal of Applied Social Psychology36 (2006): 2909–34.

Waddington, I. Sport, Health and Drugs: A Critical Sociological Perspective. London: E & FN Spon, 2000.

The case for a social science of drugs in sport

Jason Mazanov^a and Vanessa McDermott^b

^aSchool of Business, UNSW@ADFA, Canberra, Australia; ^bDepartment of Sociology, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

Social science began to take a prominent role in drugs in sport research in the early twenty-first cent...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Series pages
• 1. Developing an agenda for social science research into drugs in sport
• 2. The case for a social science of drugs in sport
• 3. Debating the role of drugs in sport: a reader
• 4. Performance enhancement and drug control in sport: ethical considerations
• 5. Towards a sociology of drugs in sport
• 6. The economics of drugs in sport
• 7. Drugs in sport: the legal issues
• 8. Health psychology and drugs in sport
• 9. Equipping athletes to make informed decisions about performance-enhancing drug use: a constructivist perspective from educational psychology
• 10. Without bounds: A cosmopolitan research agenda for drugs in sport
• 11. Towards a social science of drugs in sport
• Index