SEVASTOPOL NATIONAL TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY FINAL REPORT DOPING PREVALENCE AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN UKRAINE: A STUDY OF KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOR Project Funded by WADA’s Social Science Research Grant Program Sevastopol, Ukraine Doping study in Ukraine, page 2 RESEACH TEAM Principal Investigator Dr Bondarev Dmitriy PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Physical Education and Sport, Sevastopol National Technical University, Sevastopol, Ukraine Co-Investigators Dr Valentin Galchinskiy PhD, Professor, Chair of Physical Education and Sport Department, Sevastopol National Technical University, Sevastopol, Ukraine Dr Konstantin Ajitskiy PhD, Professor, department of Social Science and Sport, Tavrida National University, Simferopol, Ukraine Dr Vladimir Labskir PhD, Professor, Physical Education and Sport Department, Kharkiv National Technical University “KPI”, Kharkiv, Ukraine Doping study in Ukraine, page 3 CONTENTS Summary........................................................................................... 4 Objectives.......................................................................................... 5 Introduction...................................................................................... 6 Background and significance............................................................. 6 Literature review............................................................................... 6 Methodology...................................................................................... 14 Research design and method ........................................................... 14 Results and discussion....................................................................... 17 Attitude towards doping and behaviour regarding doping amongst Ukrainian students................................................................................. 17 Comparison of knowledge and attitudes towards doping of Sports students and Polytechnics students................................................................................. 22 Socio-psychological determinants of doping behaviour.................................................................................. 34 Conclusion......................................................................................... 41 References......................................................................................... 44 Effect of research on professional development.............................. 46 Implications for prevention programmes......................................... 46 Disseminations ................................................................................. 47 Doping study in Ukraine, page 4 SUMMARY This study examined the attitude towards doping and behaviour regarding doping amongst Ukrainian students. The sample consists of both Sports students and Polytechnics students. The first part of the study includes material of self-reported data of mass survey amongst students. The second part deals with focus groups’ interview materials in order to deeper investigate driving forces of doping behaviour. It has been established that the doping prevalence in Ukraine might affect nearly 10 % of university students. Prevalence of doping varies greatly with level of sports’ results, kind of sports activity, and the aims of engaging in sport. Representatives of strength and cyclical kinds of sports are at a higher risk of doping prevalence. The opinion that using doping can lead to better sport results and development of muscles is widespread among Sports students, while Polytechnics students mostly consider that doping can improve appearance and increase muscles. In spite of the widespread opinion of doping pernicious effect on health, the opinion of athletes has an essential distinction from common beliefs. Sports-oriented students consider that doping does not impact on health negatively if it is used in a reasonable way. Among athletes the opinion that doping in small doses and in reasonable proportions would be beneficial is widespread. Our results suggest that doping use has a moral legitimacy among the majority of athletes, and this point determines doping use. The motive of “necessity” looks like a mature explanation – an ideological scheme. One of the main reasons of doping use that athletes indicated was the self-affirmation motive, reaching high sport results, material welfare. A considerable proportion of students have lack of knowledge, in terms of side-effects, sources of information and testing procedure. A vast proportion of high performance athletes have admitted positive attitude towards doping. One of the main reasons to take a risk of using doping is an opportunity to have a compensation (tangible, social, ideological) for harm to health. This indicated that driving forces of doping behaviour among sports students are mainly described by the self-affirmation motive, which in turn resulted in pecuniary component. The findings highlight a gap between policy and student behaviour regarding doping. The evidence from these results may provide arguments for governing bodies and serve as a platform in creating educational programs for main stakeholders. Doping study in Ukraine, page 5 OBJECTIVES Project examined the following issues: Attitude towards doping and behaviour regarding doping amongst Ukrainian students. Comparison of attitudes towards doping of Sports students and Polytechnics students Establishing socio-psychological determinants of doping behaviour Doping study in Ukraine, page 6 INTRODUCTION Background and Significance So far research on doping has mostly focused on the prevalence of doping among European countries. Studies on attitudes towards doping in the Ukraine are, however, few and far between. Before Ukraine became independent it was thought that doping related problems were a far cry from the Ukrainian society. Since doping is also a serious ethical and social problem, attitudes hold the key to understanding its use. Little is being done to educate, raise awareness about the negative health effects and to guard youth against using doping in the Ukraine. This shows that Ukraine has no anti-doping experience. In our research we divided students’ population into two categories: sport- oriented students who succeed in a particular kind of sport and amateur sport- oriented students who do not intend to take part in a competition. From this point of view we conduct our research within students from Physical Education Academies (Sports students) and from Polytechnic Universities (Polytechnics students). Therefore, this research could reveal the current state of doping problems and help identify the most important needs and interventional steps with scientific support in anti-doping education. Findings from the study will contribute to other scientific research related to anti-doping efforts. Literature Review Probably one of the earliest mentions of using doping in order to improve sports performance has been known since the 1950s [24]. During the 1980s Doping study in Ukraine, page 7 evidence emerged that the use of doping had spread to non-athletic adolescents in the USA [25] The use of androgenic anabolic steroids with non-medical purpose among male adolescents in the USA has been reported continuously ever since. [25]. The self-declared doping use has been admitted in a number of researches carried out in European countries [4, 11, 14 ]. In order to answer a question about doping prevalence among Ukrainian youth we make an extensive search of literature, which was conducted using electronic resources, and analysis of material of Ukrainian conferences. The search strategy employed keywords for drug use in sport: “doping” in both Russian and Ukrainian languages. The following electronics resources were used: 1. National Ukrainian government library - http://www.nbuv.gov.ua/db/opac.html 2. National Russian Library of sport information - http://lib.sportedu.ru/Catalog.idc 3. Scientific journal of Ukraine: Pedagogic, psychology, medical-biological problems of physical training and sport - http://www.sportsscience.org/html/sedite.html Four resources in total were found which contain the word “doping”. Compared to a search of the keyword “doping” in English in PubMed it was rather meagre. A great number of investigations concerning doping ‘attitudes’, ‘beliefs’, ‘knowledge’, ‘perspectives’, ‘opinions’ has been carried out in Europe and other countries. This fact indicates that the problem of doping and the subjects related to doping is absolutely unelaborated in Ukraine. However, foreign (non-Ukrainian) scientists have already widely investigated the problems related social aspects of doping. Doping study in Ukraine, page 8 Considerable evidence indicates that the use of doping may involve 3–5% of students, whichever substance is used. For example, studies carried out in Sweden [1] with 5,827 students, aged 13–20, and in Denver, Colorado [2] with 6,930 high school students, showed that 3,6 % and 4.0%, respectively had used banned substances at least once in their past. Furthermore, in [4] was reported that 5.6% of students aged 14 to 18 and living in 7 different areas, mostly in northern Italy admitted having been used substances to improve muscular- mass or athletic results. Also it was well established that doping prevalence is higher among males than females and among sports competitors and also increases with age and the level of competition. This opinion may moreover turn out to be well founded in [9], as 4.7 percent of the male