Nobody wants liars in sports?! Doping perception and ideas for prevention in a school setting

Abstract

Doping is one of the major crises in high-performance sports, which emphasizes the necessity of an efficient doping prevention. Ideas how to initiate doping prevention have been complemented by a broader and societal perspective (Petróczi, Norman, & Brueckner, 2017). In order to protect young athletes and to conduct constructive discussions without focusing on moral aspects or sanctions, alternate ideas (e.g., in Germany) aim to integrate doping and prevention in school settings and can be integrated in the concept of physical literacy (e.g., Lundvall, 2015; Ontario Curriculum). An online survey was conducted to gain a deeper understanding of doping-related prerequisites and to deduce recommendations how doping prevention could be integrated in physical education. To the time of submission, the sample (n = 51) is characterized by students (63%) who want to become teachers in physical education. In line with elite sport coaches (Pöppel & Büsch, 2019), participants perceive a higher severity of doping and doping prevalence in sports (international elite sports: M = 51.7%) than official data of the World Anti-Doping Agency (1.6%, 2017) indicate. From their point of view, doping(prevention) should be integrated in school subjects like physical education, biology or ethics. According to the ideas of literacy in health and physical education contents should be worked out in discussions, own little research projects, critical analyses, or role plays. The efficacy of transdisciplinary prevention projects needs to be proven in further research. It is planned to conduct further research in Canada as a reference sample.