Videogame for the Prevention of Doping and Supplement Abuse in Teenage Athletes

McGill University

Status: Unknown

Conditions: Performance Enhancing Product Use; Doping in Sport

Treatments: Behavioral: Videogame; Behavioral: Control

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04203992

476-0418

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of this research is to test the effectiveness of an interactive doping education videogame among student athletes. Specifically, the game will teach athletes aged 13-16 years about the risks of doping and will foster the values, motivation, and behavioural skills needed to avoid temptation and pressure to dope. The investigators hypothesize that student athletes who play the intervention game will have lower use of banned substances and sport supplements, greater intentions to stay clean, and will also show improvements in the cognitive and motivational antecedents to doping when compared to a control condition.

Full description

284 student athletes will be enrolled in this two-arm quasi-experimental study. The participants will be boys and girls, aged 13 to 16 years who compete in any sport. Participants will be recruited and enrolled through partnerships with their school physical education and/or sport programs. Participants will complete baseline questionnaires assessing demographics, history of sport participation, and psychological variables related to doping prevention including knowledge, doping self-regulatory efficacy, motivation, attitudes, intentions, perceived norms, doping refusal, substance use behaviours, and doping related protective behaviours (e.g., checking the list of ingredients on medications). Participants will then be assigned to either an intervention group (n = 142; the doping videogame the investigators are developing) or a comparison group (n = 142). The comparison group will be given printed educational materials about doping education, developed by an accredited source (e.g., UNESCO). Assignment to the intervention or comparison group will be conducted at the level of the school to reduce the potential for contamination that could occur if intervention and comparison students were interacting in their school environment and sharing information they learned from the game. Participants from the intervention group will play five, 60-minute sessions over the course of one month (5 hours of total gameplay). Before the gameplay sessions begin, the Project Director and research assistants will orient the intervention group participants to the use of the intervention videogame. Players will be given a tutorial on an iPad demonstrating the mechanics of the game and how to use the iPad. Each player will have their own dedicated iPad that they will use during each game play session (this will be provided by the research team). Shortly after the last gameplay session is completed, participants from both groups will be asked to complete a questionnaire assessing the same psychological variables assessed at baseline as well as their gameplay experience. The psychological variables will also be assessed at three, six, and 12 month follow-ups.

Enrollment: 284 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 13 to 16 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Subject competes in a competitive sport at the high school level or higher
• Able to read and understand English

Exclusion criteria

• None

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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284 participants in 2 patient groups

Videogame

Experimental group

Description:

Educational videogame, five 60-minute sessions over one month

Treatment:

Behavioral: Videogame

Booklet

Active Comparator group

Description:

Educational booklet, one session

Treatment:

Behavioral: Control