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Sports Medicine - Open
Published in: Sports Medicine - Open 1/2023

Open Access 01-12-2023 | Original Research Article

Recreational Athletes’ Use of Performance-Enhancing Substances: Results from the First European Randomized Response Technique Survey

Authors: Ask Vest Christiansen, Monika Frenger, Andrea Chirico, Werner Pitsch

Published in: Sports Medicine - Open | Issue 1/2023

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Abstract

Background and Aim

Measuring the prevalence of doping in recreational sport is difficult. However, to fit their initiatives, National Anti-Doping Organizations are interested in knowing the numbers, so their scarce resources are not wasted. The present study aimed to estimate the prevalence of doping and over-the-counter medicine use for performance enhancement among recreational athletes in eight European countries.

Design

A survey covering + 200 sports aimed at recreational athletes 15 years and older was distributed via social media to sports clubs and individuals in eight European countries. To overcome social desirability bias, we applied indirect questioning by using the Randomized Response Technique and asked for the use of over-the-counter medicine and doping for the year 2019.

Results

The prevalence of the use of over-the-counter medications for performance enhancement was estimated at 10.4%. We differentiated between the concept of “doping” as the behavior to enhance performance in a certain sport and the concept of “a doper” as a property of a person. The prevalence of dopers in recreational sport was found to be 0.4%, with 3.1% male and 0% female dopers. Responses were separated into four categories: “Artistic sports,” “Combat sports,” “Games,” and “CGS sports” (i.e., sports measured in centimeters, grams, and seconds). The overall prevalence of doping in recreational sports was found to be 1.6%, and the results from Artistic and CGS sports did not differ significantly from this. However, in Games we found an estimated doping prevalence of 6.9%.

Discussion

The estimates for the prevalence of dopers and doping in this study do not equal Anti-Doping Rule Violations as stipulated by the World Anti-Doping Agency. Still, while doping is not absent in recreational sport in Europe, it appears to be a low frequent phenomenon. Also, the differences in doping prevalence between the sports categories might reflect structural and competition-related differences, rather than differences in the logic of the sporting competition or discipline-related subcultures.

Conclusion

While few recreational athletes appear to use illegal drugs to enhance performance, those who do use them are more often men than women. Yet, 1 in 10 recreational athletes uses over-the-counter medication for performance enhancement and more than 4 out of 10 use medication for other reasons than performance enhancement when doing sports. The highest doping prevalence was found in the sub-category of Games, which can likely be attributed to competition-related differences between the categories. Therefore, research on doping in recreational sports needs tailored approaches to come to a better understanding of the phenomenon.
Appendix
Available only for authorised users
Footnotes
1
In the literature, this third proportion is often referred to as “cheaters,” which is unfortunate as it may suggest that they cheated in sport by using prohibited substances or that they deliberately did not follow the RRT instructions. Therefore, we use the term “Instruction non-compliant” or INC responder. Further analysis of the RRT method with INC detection is available in [27, 29, 30].
 
2
There was a correlation between respondents registering other genders than men or women, and iffy data like “born in 1926 and still in school,” “born in 2004 and having a PhD,” as well as response times below 15 s for the first RRT question.
 
3
When choosing the highest level of competition to prioritize sports, we accommodate the widely accepted hypothesis that doping is used to give a competitive edge. Thus, the likelihood for someone to use performance-enhancing substances increases with the level of competition. Still, in line with the survey’s aim to address recreational sport, very few respondents reported to be at the international level. And those who did, most often played sports with low participation rates and low public interest in their country. It could for instance be a Dane choosing American football. A sport played by few in Denmark, which would result in players often taking part in international tournaments to compete. Even if they would thus be “international level,” they would still be regarded as amateurs. For this reason, we have not excluded “international level” records from the analysis.
 
4
The reason for selecting the yes-answer when there was one “yes” and one “no,” is that it has the highest probability of originating from someone who doped. Recall that only some respondents would answer yes because they doped, while (most) others would do so because of the instruction. We made the decision to choose the “yes-answer” because it would guarantee that we did not accidentally discard any responses from dopers and thereby inadvertently would end up with an erroneously low estimate of dopers.
 
5
The differences in the number of respondents from the eight countries, could of course also be due to differences in strategy, effort, or luck in survey dissemination from the student assistants assigned with this task.
 
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Metadata
Title
Recreational Athletes’ Use of Performance-Enhancing Substances: Results from the First European Randomized Response Technique Survey
Authors
Ask Vest Christiansen
Monika Frenger
Andrea Chirico
Werner Pitsch
Publication date
01-12-2023
Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Published in
Sports Medicine - Open / Issue 1/2023
Print ISSN: 2199-1170
Electronic ISSN: 2198-9761
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s40798-022-00548-2

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