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This study examined the relative ways in which muscularity and thinness concerns longitudinally influence adolescents’ intentions to use doping substances. It was hypothesized that muscularity and thinness exert their effects on doping intentions by promoting endorsement of positive attitudes toward doping use in male and female adolescents and across different levels of sport involvement. To test this hypothesis, nearly 900 high school adolescents provided questionnaire data on two separate occasions during an academic year. On average, boys, as well as boys and girls who practice some sport, had relatively strong concerns about muscularity, whereas girls showed relatively strong thinness concerns. Boys also expressed more positive attitudes about doping than did girls. Structural equation modeling showed that muscularity and thinness have direct effects on adolescents’ intentions to engage in doping and that muscularity, but not thinness, partly exerts its effects through the endorsement of positive attitudes toward doping.

The use of ergogenic aids is common in sport, even among preadolescent athletes (8,15,25). The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between preadolescents’ use of nutritional ergogenic aids (creatine and amino acids) and gender, age, athletic participation, and sport-relevant psychological factors (i.e., sport success motivation, task and ego orientation, self-efficacy). Two thousand four hundred fifty 11- to 13-year-old children participated in this study. Results suggest that substance use increases with age, especially among male preadolescents; that gender differences are particularly marked among older preadolescents; and that a high commitment to sport training represents a risk factor of ergogenic supplementation only when it is linked to certain psychological dispositions, such as a high ego orientation and a low task orientation.