Abstract
Doping is a crisis in high-performance sports, which affects also the public opinion. High-performance sport finds itself in conflicts between diverse external protagonists such as politics, media and the society, which demand peak performance but intended to preserve the "clean sport image", and impose sanctions in case of doping (Petróczi & Strauss, 2015). In this presentation, results of a narrative review concerning outwardly presented public stances towards doping will be discussed.
An analysis of articles linked by the scientific database "SCOPUS" concerning the keywords "doping" and "perception" and corresponding terms was carried out. Due to the choice of wide-ranging keywords to receive a comprehensive impression of the topic, the high amount of initial search results (N=726) were strictly restricted on thematic ground. Thus, a high amount of studies concerning athlete's attitudes or coaches' attitudes towards doping were eliminated. Additionally, a forward- and backward search was conducted.
Two complementary themes emerged: On one hand, there is a clearly rejecting attitude towards doping, which was associated with strong demands for severe sanctions (Engelberg, Moston, & Skinner, 2012). On the other hand, a more tolerant stance presents, especially if the connection between athletes and sport fans is considered (Solberg, Hanstad, & Thøring, 2010).
A differentiated and not solely negative public stance towards doping becomes obvious. Therefore, the public stance should be further investigated based on experimental designs. This could help to develop a deeper insight into, whether we face some kind of double standards concerning the public perception of high-performance sports and athletes.
