| Summary: | <p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Understanding athletes' attitudes and behavioural intentions towards performance enhancement is critical to informing anti-doping intervention strategies. Capturing the complexity of these attitudes beyond verbal declarations requires indirect methods. This pilot study was aimed at developing and validating a method to assess implicit doping attitudes using an Implicit Associations Test (IAT) approach.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The conventional IAT evaluation task (categorising 'good' and 'bad' words) was combined with a novel 'doping' versus 'nutrition supplements' category pair to create a performance-enhancement related IAT protocol (PE-IAT). The difference between average response times to 'good-doping' and 'bad-doping' combinations represents an estimate of implicit attitude towards doping in relation to nutritional supplements. 111 sports and exercise science undergraduates completed the PE-IAT, the Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale (PEAS) and answered questions regarding their beliefs about doping.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Longer response times were observed in the mixed category discrimination trials where categories 'good' and 'doping' shared the same response key (compared to 'bad-doping' combination on the same key) indicating a less favourable evaluation of doping substances. The PE-IAT measure did not correlate significantly with the declared doping attitudes (<it>r </it>= .181, <it>p </it>= .142), indicating a predictable partial dissociation. Action-oriented self-report expressed stronger associations with PE-IAT: participants who declared they would consider using doping showed significantly less implicit negativity towards banned substances (<it>U </it>= 109.00, <it>p </it>= .047). Similarly, those who reported more lenient explicit attitudes towards doping or expressly supported legalizing it, showed less implicit negativity towards doping in the sample, although neither observed differences reached statistical significance (<it>t </it>= 1.300, <it>p </it>= .198, and <it>U </it>= 231.00, <it>p </it>= .319, respectively). Known-group validation strategy yielded mixed results: while competitive sport participants scored significantly lower than non-competitive ones on the PEAS (<it>t </it>= -2.71, <it>p </it>= .008), the two groups did not differ on PE-IAT (<it>t </it>= -.093, <it>p </it>= .926).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The results suggest a potential of the PE-IAT method to capture undeclared attitudes to doping and predict behaviour, which can support targeted anti-doping intervention and related research. The initial evidence of validity is promising but also indicates a need for improvement to the protocol and stimulus material.</p>
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