SHOULD I REPORT ABUSE? - ATTITUDES TOWARD DOPING TESTING AND ANONYMOUS REPORTING IN THE WHISTLEBOWER PROGRAMME

Abstract

Despite all endeavours to prevent it, the use of performance-enhancing substances continues to occur in sports and social science research suggests that doping prevalence is likely much higher than what is found through testing. One of the ways to uncover doping violators is through reporting illicit drug use, through “doping whistleblowing” – the readiness to do so depends highly on the level of our moral development and the motivation to do so. It was exactly this method, which helped uncover some of the biggest doping scandals in sport in the past few years and our purpose in this study was to examine attitudes toward drug testing and anonymous reporting and see, if we can predict an athlete’s intention to report anonymously based on attitudes toward drug testing. 255 top athletes and coaches from Estonia and Slovenia-two small, athletically successful countries-participated in this study, 176 male and 79 female, 156 athletes and 99 coaches from team and individual sports. They filled out an attitudes questionnaire about drug testing and an anonymous report. The participants filled out a questionnaire online. We used t – test to compare subgroups of participants and correlation and linear regression to look for relations between doping attitudes and willingness to make an anonymous report. Comparisons of subgroups of participants revealed that female participants are more likely to believe that taking banned substances should be punished but are less likely to make an anonymous report. We also found that coaches seem to be better informed about the issue of doping than athletes and trust NADO more than athletes. We found several correlations between attitudes toward doping testing and those toward anonymous report and we tried to predict the willingness to make an anonymous report. We found several predictors, which were different for men and women. NADOs play an important role in creating conditions, which will enable people to report doping anonymously, but it has to be done both through education and through rigorous testing. This will ensure that whistleblowing can become an active part of the fight for clean sport.