Knowledge, Attitudes and Beliefs on Doping Among Secondary School Sports and Games in Kenya.

Sports and games teachers play a key role as athlete support personnel (ASP) in the lives of athletes in secondary schools. They play the roles of coaches, trainers, team managers, first aiders and counsellors to the student's athletes. Therefore, it is the duty of the sports and games teachers to guarantee that student athletes participate in fair competition and clean sports. This study assessed the attitudes, knowledge, and beliefs of sports and games teachers on doping. The study objectives assessed the knowledge that sports and game teachers have about doping laws and regulations, as well as their attitudes, sources of information, and beliefs about doping. Additionally, it investigated whether the knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs of sports and games teachers differed depending on gender and experience. A cross-sectional survey design was used for the study. The 256 sports and games teachers who competed in Kenya under the auspices of KSSSA were the target population. Through systematic random sampling 176 secondary school sports and games teachers took part in the study. An online questionnaire based on the WADA social sciences package was used to collect data. The SPSS data analysis process employed descriptive statistics, including means, percentages, and standard deviations. To determine if there was a significant difference in the knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs of sports and games teachers based on gender and experience, the Mann-Whitney U test and Krustal Wallis H test were utilised. The study revealed encouraging levels of general knowledge with the main sources for anti-doping information for sports and games teachers in Kenya being the WADA website 38.4% followed by television at 36.2%. It also uncovered significant misconceptions regarding supplement use with the sports and games teachers' beliefs strongly emphasising the health risks and ethical consequences of doping. However, there was no statistically significant differences in anti-doping knowledge, attitude or beliefs based on gender or years of coaching experience.