In force Publication date 18 Apr 18
Developing an evidence-based smartphone application for monitoring and promoting athletes’ awareness to unintentional doping
Project description
Summary
This research project aims to develop an evidence-based smartphone application that monitors and enhances athletes’ awareness to the avoidance of unintentional doping.
Methodology
In phase 1, the researchers successfully developed a smartphone application (app) in the context of monitoring and promoting athletes’ awareness of unintentional doping. Inside this new and innovative application, they have implemented both psychological assessment and educational materials and the contents were translated and made available in both English and Chinese. In phase 2, the researchers proposed to test the effectiveness of the smartphone application that was developed in phase 1 by using a randomized controlled trial among athletes in at least two different countries. All participating athletes was invited to complete assessments at 0-months (baseline), 1-month, 3-months and 6-month intervals to assess the effectiveness of the smartphone application longitudinally and its ability to be sustained over time. Other than baseline assessments, participants were also invited to complete subsequent follow-up assessments at 1-month, 3-months and 6-months. Assessments at all timepoints were identical.
Results
The results provided mixed findings where some variables were significant whilst others were not. Variables that had a significant interaction effect were: self-control and the SC-IAT. A significant interaction effect means that there are differences across groups (treatment v. control) across time of which may be explained by the treatment effect. By the end of the experiment, those in the treatment group had lower self-control (due to stronger depletion of checking for banned substances) and more negative implicit attitudes towards doping than compared to those in the control group. Some variables also revealed significant main effect of time, namely behavioral adherence to the avoidance of unintentional doping and self-control.
Significance for Clean Sport
A majority of the doping cases can be attributed to intentional doping, however there has been increasing incidences that doping occurred unintentionally or inadvertently. With this, new research is still needed to investigate psychological factors that are related to the prevention of unintentional doping. Through the successful development of a smartphone application, the research team was able to scratch the surface of such, paving the way for future research.