Drugs and supplements in amateur boxing: pugilistic amateurism and ideologies of performance

This research, which is based on the thoughts and experiences of coaches, athletes, officials and others involved in amateur boxing, explores the use of supplements, recreational and performance-enhancing drugs in the sport. After providing some context through a discussion of ideologies that shape elite sport, some key methodological issues are briefly described. The findings explore the manner in which ideologies of performance are shaped in relation to the notion of 'pugilistic amateurism'. In this way, the paper maps out a theoretical scaffold that can be used to understand the manner in which 'old school' training methods and participation in sport align with 'traditional' understandings of work-class manhood to produce an ideological tension with a win-at-all-costs mentality. This sheds light on the ways that boxing gyms might be understood as havens where drugs use can be resisted at the same times as potentially positive behaviours can be learned

Methodological considerations regarding response bias effect in substance use research: is correlation between the measured variables sufficient?

Efforts for drug free sport include developing a better understanding of the behavioural determinants that underline doping with an increased interest in developing anti-doping prevention and intervention programmes. Empirical testing of both is dominated by self-report questionnaires, which is the most widely used method in psychological assessments and sociology polls. Disturbingly, the potential distorting effect of socially desirable responding (SD) is seldom considered in doping research, or dismissed based on weak correlation between some SD measure and the variables of interest. The aim of this report is to draw attention to i) the potential distorting effect of SD and ii) the limitation of using correlation analysis between a SD measure and the individual measures. Models of doping opinion as a potentially contentious issue was tested using structural equation modeling technique (SEM) with and without the SD variable, on a dataset of 278 athletes, assessing the SD effect both at the i) indicator and ii) construct levels, as well as iii) testing SD as an independent variable affecting expressed doping opinion. Participants were categorised by their SD score into high- and low SD groups. Based on low correlation coefficients (<|0.22|) observed in the overall sample, SD effect on the indicator variables could be disregarded. Regression weights between predictors and the outcome variable varied between groups with high and low SD but despite the practically non-existing relationship between SD and predictors (<|0.11|) in the low SD group, both groups showed improved model fit with SD, independently. The results of this study clearly demonstrate the presence of SD effect and the inadequacy of the commonly used pairwise correlation to assess social desirability at model level. In the absence of direct observation of the target behaviour (i.e. doping use), evaluation of the effectiveness of future anti-doping campaign, along with empirical testing of refined doping behavioural models, will likely to continue to rely on self-reported information. Over and above controlling the effect of socially desirable responding in research that makes inferences based on self-reported information on social cognitive and behavioural measures, it is recommended that SD effect is appropriately assessed during data analysis