A cross-cultural investigation of the effects of coach motivational strategies on athlete doping behaviors: Direct and indirect relations

Summary: This project proposes two studies that draw from self-determination theory to examine adaptive and maladaptive coach motivational strategies, and their positive/negative effects on athletes’ psychological needs, life goals, prosocial and antisocial moral attitudes, doping intention and use. The first study will utilize individual and focus group interviews with adult athletes and their coaches from a variety of sports. The second study will utilize a longitudinal quantitative methodology assessing, via validated questionnaires, the temporal relations among the aforementioned variables at the beginning and end of a sport season. We aim to conduct both studies in two countries (UK and Greece) in which there is accumulated research evidence on the psychological predictors of doping use in sport.