Review of social science anti-doping literature and recommendations for action

A systematic review of the social science literature on doping published between 2000 and the present was conducted. A total of 529 relevant publications were identified.This included 481 academic peer-reviewed journal articles (90.9% of the total), 43 chapters in scholarly books (8.1%) and five scholarly books (0.9%). Each publication was coded for year of publication, research methodology, country of origin (i.e., where data collection occurred), populations studied, sample sizes and focus of the study.The number of publications on doping over the period 2000 to 2014 has shown a number of peaks and troughs. From only a handful of studies (2000), there was a brief surge (2001), a decline (2002-03) then a steady increase (2004-09). Publication numbers have plateaued in recent years (2010-13), averaging about one new article per week. Publications were classified according to their research methodology. By far the largest number of publications was in the document analysis category (n=236; 44.6% of the total). Most of the publications in this category were based on document analysis (particularly the WADA Code and other policy documents), although there were some publications that examined other research papers (i.e., literature reviews; n=9) and some theoretical models (n=8).