Hong Kong

tennis by the official sporting WADA

The present study aimed to assess current anti-doping efforts among Hong

Kong's national sport organizations (NSOs), for example

organizations' readiness to change and to initiate or strengthen

anti-doping measures. The points of view of administrators, coaches,

and committee members were considered. A

great majority of NSOs in Hong Kong appeared to be at the

contemplation stage, concerning anti-doping actions. The major

constraints they faced were limited funds and manpower.

The World Anti-Doping Program, developed by the World Anti-Doping

Agency (WADA), is structured in three levels: a World Anti-Doping

Code, international standards, and models of and guidelines for best

practices. WADA officials state that one purpose of the World

Anti-Doping Program and code is "to ensure harmonized, coordinated,

and effective anti-doping programs at the international and national

level with regard to detection, deterrence, and prevention of doping"

(World Anti-Doping Agency, 2003). We would like to suggest that the

program actually can serve two purposes. On the macro level, it can

provide various international federations and national anti-doping

organizations (NADOs) with a framework for developing anti-doping

policies, rules, and regulations. On a micro level, it can guide

national sport organizations (NSOs) in carrying out anti-doping

functions like educational programming and in adopting appropriate

practices to demonstrate compliance with various anti-doping

regulations.

The World Anti-Doping Code has been in place for over 5 years, so the

roles of international federations and NADOs in promoting and

monitoring athletes' anti-doping behaviors should be clear to sport

organizations and professionals involved in high-level competition

(e.g., World Games, Olympics). Those not involved at that level may

be less familiar with arrangements, for instance coaches and

administrators of NSOs that have not produced athletes qualifying for

high-level competitions. Even NSOs with experience in high-level

competition may have second- or third-tier athletes lacking the

exposure their elite counterparts have had. Given that NSOs play a

significant role in communicating anti-doping information to athletes

and explaining their role in anti-doping regulations, the evaluation

of NSOs' current practices is important. The present study provided

such an evaluation, using a case-study approach to determine the

extent of Hong Kong NSOs' compliance with the anti-doping program.

Specifically, we aimed to assess whether Hong Kong's NSOs were

implementing anti-doping functions, as well as to identify

constraints on their full compliance. Although the study involved

only Hong Kong organizations, knowledge gained should be applicable

in countries with similar anti-doping experience, and the study

should thus prove useful to international federations, NADOs, and

WADA as they direct resources and efforts.

Since to an extent NSOs are organizations whose anti-doping

compliance or noncompliance can be treated as the adoption of one

management practice over another, their anti-doping compliance can be

modeled as organizational change. We therefore reviewed such models

and chose Prochaska's transtheoretical model (TTM) (Prochaska,

2000) to analyze NSO anti-doping functions. The popular TTM was

originally developed to explain behavioral change in individuals

(Prochaska, Prochaska, & Levesque, 2001).

Central to the TTM are three theoretical constructs related to

change: (a) stages of change, (b) decisional balance, and (c) process

of change. Intentional change-whether by an individual or an

organization-can occur in stages and so can be seen as a series of

movements along a continuum. There are six such movements or stages:

pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action,

maintenance, and termination. The terminology process

of change, in contrast, connotes the belief that change is

influenced by both overt and covert activities that comprise

experiential processes and behavioralprocesses.

Experiential processes characterize the early-stage transition and

include consciousness raising, dramatic relief, environmental

reevaluation, social liberation, and self-reevaluation.

Behavioral processes characterize later-stage transition and include

stimulus control, helping relationship, counter conditioning,

reinforcement management, and self-liberation.

In sum, the TTM provides an opportunity to understand the temporal

ordering of events as an established pattern is changed, which is

what we intended to do in terms of the NSOs' implementation of

anti-doping functions. It also provides opportunity to explore

mechanisms mediating intentional change (e.g., constraints on

implementation of anti-doping functions). An additional rationale for

adopting the model was its prior successful application in an

analysis of family-service agencies (Prochaska, 2000), a study of the

implementation of a system of "time-limited therapy" that has

notable parallels to the implementation of anti-doping functions.

Yes.

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