From learning to leading: Making and evaluating the impact of anti-doping education with a competency approach

Educating athletes is essential, but is it creating any real change? Evaluating anti-doping education became mandatory with the introduction of the International Standard for Education. We argue that anti-doping education has the potential to have a social and societal impact not only in the sport context but beyond. Following this, we advise that outcome evaluation of anti-doping education should be holistic and focus on this social and societal impact rather than relying solely on outputs (what is delivered). To generate and evaluate the true impact of anti-doping education, we need to move beyond educating and start focusing on developing athletes’ competency instead. Adopting the personal agency concept and building on our preliminary work with anti-doping literacy, we propose one feasible way of designing such holistic evaluation tool. We argue that the mandatory evaluation should be approached from the impact angle and worked backwards to map what knowledge and skills are necessary to fulfil the impact, which should inform the content of anti-doping education – not the other way around.