Doping Use in High-School Students: Measuring Attitudes, Self-Efficacy, and Moral Disengagement Across Genders and Countries

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Laura Girelli¹  Elisa Cavicchiolo²  Fabio Alivernini²  Sara Manganelli²  Andrea Chirico³  Federica Galli³  Mauro Cozzolino¹  Fabio Lucidi³ 

[1] Department of Human, and Educational Sciences, University of Salerno;National Institute for the Evaluation of the Education System (INVALSI);Department of Social and Developmental Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome

关键词: high-school students;    self-regulatory efficacy;    moral disengagement;    measurement invariance;    gender differences;    cross-cultural differences;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00663

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

The main aim of this research was to test the factorial validity and measurement invariance across genders and countries of a set of instruments designed to assess high-school students’ attitudes, self-regulatory efficacy, and moral disengagement with regard to doping. A second aim was to examine the criterion and predictive validity of these scales. In total, 402 high-school students from Italy, Romania, and Turkey (40.0, 25.1, and 34.9%, respectively; M age 14.78 years old; SD = 1.04; 52.8% females) completed questionnaires measuring attitudes toward doping, self-regulatory efficacy in refraining from doping, doping-specific moral disengagement, and intention to use doping substances. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) supported our expectations with regard to the factor structure of the scales. Multigroup CFAs provided evidence for the full equivalence of the measures across males and females and partial equivalence of the measures across the three countries. The results of the latent mean comparison showed that male students had lower levels of self-regulatory efficacy than females and that Romanian and Turkish students had higher levels of moral disengagement and lower level of self-regulatory efficacy than Italian students. Finally, the results of a structural equation modeling supported the hypothesis that the proposed model predicted students’ intentions to use doping, thus generally confirming the criterion and the predictive validity of the measures. These findings suggested the validity of a set of instruments measuring attitudes toward doping, self-regulatory efficacy to refrain from doping, and doping-specific moral disengagement in high-school students from a cross-gender and a cross-cultural perspective and provided meaningful estimates of the differences in the three factors between males and females as well as between Italian, Romanian, and Turkish high-school students.

【 授权许可】

CC BY