Performance Enhancement & Health 3 (2015) 93–101 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Performance Enhancement & Health journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/peh Coach perceptions of performance enhancement in adolescence: The sport drug control model for adolescent athletes  Adam R. Nicholls a,* , John L. Perry a , Andrew R. Levy b , Rudi Meir c , Leigh Jones d , Timothy Baghurst e , Colin Sanctuary f , Mark A. Thompson a a University of Hull, United Kingdom b Edge Hill University, United Kingdom c Southern Cross University, Australia d University of Newport, United Kingdom e Oklahoma State University, United States f York St. John University, United Kingdom article info Article history: Received 27 April 2015 Received in revised form 17 June 2015 Accepted 3 July 2015 Available online 10 August 2015 Keywords: Attitudes Coaches Doping Performance enhancing drugs Youth abstract Aim: We qualitatively explored the Sport Drug Control Model (SDCM; Donovan, Eggar, Kapernick, & Mendoza, 2002), in order to examine coaches’ perceptions of adolescent athletes’ attitudes and suscep- tibility towards doping. Methods: Eleven coaches (M = 10) from four countries, who worked in seven different sports (athletics, basketball, kayaking, racquetball, rowing, rugby league, and rugby union) were recruited to take part in semi-structured interviews. Transcribed interviews were analysed via a three-stage inductive and deductive coding process, which allowed us to identify common themes among the participants. Results: The coaches believed that adolescents’ attitudes towards doping were influenced by perceptions of threat and benefit appraisals, morality, self-esteem, legitimacy, and reference group opinion. We also identified additional factors, which included age/maturation, sport level, pressure, country of residence, and ethnicity. Conclusions: Our findings provide qualitative support for the SDCM, but also offer fresh insight into some of the nuances specific to adolescent athletes from different countries and cultures. Further research is required to test our proposed model with larger samples of adolescent athletes. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. According to the World Anti-Doping Agency’s most recent code (WADA, 2015), doping is defined as the occurrence of anti-doping rule violations. This includes the presence of a prohibited sub- stance, its metabolites or markers within an athlete’s sample, which will be referred to in this article as performance enhancing drugs (PEDs). The use of PEDs represents a problem to sport, because it gives athletes an unfair performance advantage and has the poten- tial to cause ill health (Johnson, 2012). In recent years there has been an increase in the number of studies that have examined the risk factors associated with doping among athletes. Attitudes and susceptibility are two risk factors that have received substantial attention. Attitudes refer to the tendency to act or react in either  This study is part of a larger project, which is supported by a grant from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). This grant was awarded to Adam R. Nicholls. * Corresponding author. E-mail address: a.nicholls@hull.ac.uk (A.R. Nicholls). positive or negative way to an object (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993), whereas doping susceptibility has been defined as “the absence of a firm resolve not to engage in doping activities or to give any consideration at all to an offer to do so” (Gucciardi, Jalleh, & Donovan, 2010, p. 481). In their recent meta-analysis, Ntoumanis, Ng, Barkoukis, and Backhouse (2014) revealed that positive atti- tudes towards doping were strong correlates of doping intentions and behaviours. This finding has been echoed by Lazuras, Barkoukis, and Tsorbatzoudis (2015) among a sample of adolescent athletes. There is, however, less empirical data among early and middle adolescent athletes’ attitudes towards doping, in comparison with adult athletes. Early and middle adolescence is the period in which a person is aged between 12 and 18 years of age (Weiss & Bredemeier, 1983). The limited amount of research with adolescents is surpris- ing, because adolescence is thought to be the time when attitudes are formed (Backhouse, Patterson, & McKenna, 2012; Hartan & Latané, 1997). Adolescence is also a period when a person is at risk of doping (Schirlin et al., 2009). In this study, we examined coach http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.peh.2015.07.001 2211-2669/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.