Anabolic Steroid and Performance Enhancing Drug Use

¶ … Anabolic Steroid and Performance Enhancing Drug Use

Among High School Athletes

Anabolic steroid use has, at least in the past, been prevalent among major college and, especially, professional sports. Major League Baseball implemented a drug testing regimen very recently after backlash from fans made it an issue that the sport believed it had to listen to. The National Football League has a testing program that has been in place since 1989, and other sports have also begun programs to test for anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing drugs (PED) to ensure that there is a level playing field among all of their athletes. Unfortunately this testing has led to consequences for some athletes.

Some notable case of athletes being either stripped of honors or not being selected for honors because they acknowledged PED or steroid use have occurred in recent times. Lance Armstrong was recently stripped of all of his wins in the seven (7) Tour de France bicycle races that had previously been awarded as wins because he was found to have doped his blood. Mark McGwire has not been voted into the Professional Baseball Hall of Fame, and many suspect it is because he admitted using the substance Creatine to assist him during workouts. Others who are soon to be eligible for the MLB Hall of Fame may face the same scrutiny.

Although professional athletes will experience the positive performance enhancing and negative after effects of steroid use, high school athletes, who often follow the example of their heroes in professional leagues and the Olympics are even more of a concern. The professional athletes are just as susceptible to the negative effects of the drugs, but they are adults and, hopefully, understand what can happen if they abuse the drugs. High school athletes, especially male athletes, are more susceptible to the poor guidance offered by the professional athletes because they look up to them, and because they want to reach that level of pay and play themselves. The problem is that they may be even more susceptible to the negative effects because their bodies are still growing.

This research paper looks at the prevalence of steroid and suspected steroid and PED use in one high school. The findings are given based on survey research which was conducted with athletes who wished to participate, and none were coerced. All athletes were allowed to participate anonymously having their survey sheets numbered rather than requiring any personal information. The purpose of this study is to determine what level the use of PEDs is in this particular school, and as the population is representative of a random cross sampling of high school athletes across the state, to make inferences based on this data.

Literature Review

The goal of this a literature review is to examine the literature related to PED and anabolic steroid use among high school athletes. Since it is understood that self-reported use is inaccurate, it is important to look at what others believe is the actual usage. The gathered literature also looks at attitudes toward use, health issues and the prospect of national mandatory drug testing for high school athletes.

Many studies have tried to determine how many high school students are actually using PED and anabolic steroids, but it is difficult to measure this use with any accuracy. One study found that only 1% of high school athletes would admit to using steroids and 15% said that they used some form of legal muscle building supplement (Green, 2007). More accurately "The 2003 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that 6.8% of adolescent males and 5.3% of adolescent females had experimented anabolic steroids at some point in their lifetime" (Denham, 2006).This use comes almost entirely from male athletes with 27% saying that they used some form of artificial means to encourage muscle growth (Green, 2007). This level does not coincide with what other say regarding how much they have seen used or how much they believe to be used. High school athletes, when asked how much use they either suspect or have observed say that the number is closer to 15% use (Green, 2007). This question involves all types of PED use and not just anabolic steroids, but it primarily said to be pill or injectable anabolic steroid use.

It is no surprise then, seeing that the predominant use of such substances is male, that attitudes toward use among high school males would be much more positive than among high school females. One of the reasons for this is the body image ideal difference between males and females. Women are more likely to want a lean, fit figure (Denham, 2006) and males are more prone to desiring a body that demonstrates large muscle mass (Martin & Govender, 2011). One study, conducted with adolescents in South Africa demonstrated that the reason that young men want this type of body is because of the prevailing image of masculinity that they have been shown their entire lives (Martin & Govender, 2011). In South Africa, the culture is dominated by a rugby culture which requires that men achieve a certain body type so that they can compete successfully (Martin & Govender, 2011). In the United States, the attitude is the same even of the sport is similar but different. American football, which is by far the most popular team sport in the United States, also requires that young men attain a large muscular shape. The larger the body types, as far as that can be achieved, the more masculine a young man is thought to be in many cases (Perko, et al., 2007). This means that high school aged men realize that if they want to move to the highest levels of the sport, they will have to obtain a muscular physique. Therefore, these athletes are much more likely to see anabolic steroid use as an alternative. Performance-enhancing drugs influence all sports, but the high school mindset is still largely against their use (Talpade, Lattimore & Graham, 2008). Thus, PED use can largely be said to be anabolic steroid use among high school aged people.

Young people are influenced as far as body type by the images that they see in current media. Parents can tell their children safe and effective ways to add muscle, but young athletes are much more inclined, especially after they reach high school age, to listen to friends and media representations of favorite athletes rather than parents (Denham, 2006). This is not to say that the effect of the media is all negative on youth. Because they gather vital information from media streams, youth are likely to draw conclusions that are meant to be unfavorable regarding the use of illicit drugs for any reason. Denham (2006) found that "In the United States, the press has characterized illicit drug use as morally wrong, and media have characterized the use of steroids as a threat to competitive integrity and broader ideals of fairness in American society." Because the media has demonstrated the relative unfairness that is created when people use steroids and other PEDs, young people seem to be understanding the message. However, research has not demonstrated a large change in the attitudes of those who are most vulnerable to the use of steroids.

The Information that attitudes are not changing as rapidly as some may expect them to comes from studies which show that body characteristics of high school athletes, especially football players, is increasing not staying the same or decreasing (Perko, et al., 2007). This study used three different timelines and BMI changes for athletes in those timelines to show how football players body mass has increased greatly since the introduction of anabolic steroids into schools. The researchers found that;

"When data points are plotted on a regression line, results show from 1963 to 1971 there is very little change in BMI among football players and nonathletes. From 1972-1989, immediately following the first documented use of AS in high schools, there is a significant and unexplained increase in BMI in football players but no increase for nonathletes. Conversely, the years immediately following AS legislation, 1991 and 2005 show the only two reductions in 42 years in BMI among football players" (Perko, et al., 2007).

This shows does not necessarily show that use of anabolic steroids is the cause of the increased growth of BMI over these periods. However, it is easy to assume that this is the case when comparing the relatively slow growth among non-athletes of BMI and the growth in the BMI of high school football players. It is also interesting that the growth curve slowed for two years after legislation was introduced to control anabolic steroids, but then returned to levels that were increasing rapidly. When the comparison is made and the changes demonstrated, it is easy to assume, as the authors of the study did, that the result is the variable that was introduced at the beginning of the increased BMI growth (Perko, et al., 2007).

High school athletes already realize the health risks that they are taking and now teachers and students are being made aware of the issues (Liberatore, 2009). However, mandatory drug testing has still not been instituted by most states (only now being done in New Jersey (Sysol, 2008) and is not a consideration as yet on the federal level. Although studies have demonstrated that high school athletes continue to use these drugs to artificially enhance their play, the issue of mandatory testing remains in its infancy (Sysol, 2008).

Methodology

The following study was conducted using survey research in which high school athletes from one school district were asked to evaluate their known and suspected knowledge of high school anabolic steroid and PED use. 613 athletes completed the question survey. The use of athletes was meant to give a more accurate representation of how many students were actively using the substances or were suspected of use by their fellow athletes.

The questions themselves were given to the athletes by their coaches, and the athletes, all of whom participated, were given the option to not take the survey. The high school participants were between the ages of 14 and 19, with the bulk being from 15 to 18 years of age. The students were not asked to place their names on the surveys, and they were simply numbered t protect the identity of the students and give their responses appropriate anonymity. The students played a variety of sports, with the football and wrestling teams having by far the most athletes.

The data was analyzed using mainly a raw data approach, which looked took a simple look at the responses given, and a Chi Square test which analyzed the relative difference between the people who said that they had done steroids or other performance enhancing substance (whether legal or illegal), and the guess from fellow students regarding what the response would be. The questions used for the Chi Square test were numbers 6,7,8 and 15.

Results

The results of the survey are interesting because they do not coincide with the self-report data collected by Green (2007). The researcher in this case found that roughly 1% of high school athletes, for whatever reason, would admit to using anabolic steroids. In the present study the number was exactly the same. Approximately 13.7% of the athletes (84 of 613) admitted to using illicit drugs. This result was not expected given the nature of the use and the fact that a student would be dismissed from the team he or she was on and could possibly be charged with a crime. This use is also not concurrent with that found in the testing conducted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Denham (2006). This was not expected since the CDC study used actual testing methods, although the samples were kept anonymous to protect the identity of the students, instead of self-report methods (Denham, 2006). Therefore, the accuracy of this information is in question, and it is a quandary why these students admitted to a greater degree of use than had been found in previous instances of self-report and in studies in which testing is used.

Besides the actual report that the students gave in the surveys, a Chi Square distribution test was used to determine if there is a reason to suspect that the data between what students suspected and what was actually reported was different. The students who had used anabolic steroid use at a 13.7% rate; other students guessed that the actual rate, from what they had observed and heard of, would be approximately the same as the self-report data assumed by Green (2007). The students, as a whole believed there would be about 1.8% students who actually used some form of PED. This finding does not coincide with the data from the self-reported use which shows up in the Chi Square analysis. This shows that there is no confidence in the result reported. Usually a 95% confidence level is used, and this result showed that the researcher cannot be confident in the reports of the athletes who said that they had done steroids based on the responses of their peers since 84 of 613 said that they had done steroids at least once, and their peers believed the actual number would be approximately 16 of 613.

Other questions in the survey could not be tested for statistical accuracy, but will be an interesting study in the summary section of the report.

Summary

The self-report data, as has been suggested several times, is difficult to use because it is often very inaccurate. This can be seen in one of two ways. First, most of the time people will try to appear better than they are and skew the date toward a positive result. This happens often when people are asked questions regarding drug use and they respond that they do not use drugs even when statistics would show that some of the people reporting their use have to be telling an untruth. The other issue can be that, because of peer pressure or some other issue, the opposite is occurring. That is what seemed to happen in this survey. It would be expected that students would report less than the 5% to 6% use that is suspected to be the case because of data using actual blood tests to determine levels of use. This had previously been found to be the case in the Green (2007) data, and was backed by the use suspected by the students at this school. However, reported data in this case was more than twice what the actual data said it would be if the subjects were all tested, and approximately ten times more than earlier data that had been gathered. There are two possible answers to this dilemma. Either the students at this school exhibit a much greater anabolic steroid and PED use than has been found to be the case in the past, or they are not being accurate in their reporting and skewing it in the opposite direction. The reason for this second conjecture could be that there are those among the athletes who think it is "cool" to use the banned substances, so they are using peer pressure as a positive self-report technique. This could be the case, especially among those who are engaged in the more macho sports such as football and wrestling (which comprise 30% of all athletes). It seems that this data has been abnormally skewed to a great degree and would need further research. A new survey, and a new methodology may be needed to determine the truth of this matter. If by testing or some other method it is found that the count is relatively accurate, then this school definitely needs an education and a mandatory testing program.