Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale (PEAS)

1. Abstract

The Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale (PEAS) is an internationally recognized, standardized psychometric instrument designed to quantify explicit, self-reported attitudes toward doping in sport and performance enhancement. Developed and refined systematically by Andrea Petróczi and colleagues across the mid-to-late 2000s, the PEAS represents the foundational self-report measure operationalizing moral, utilitarian, and instrumental orientations toward chemical ergogenic aids and prohibited substances among competitive athletes, coaches, and athletic support personnel. Originally calibrated from an expansive item pool capturing diverse facets of competitive pressure, ethical rationalization, and risk perception, the contemporary standard self-administered unidimensional inventory comprises 17 statements scored along a 6-point Likert-type rating format ranging from 1 (“Strongly disagree”) to 6 (“Strongly agree”). The scale avoids neutral midpoints to prevent social desirability bias and forced ambivalent hedging, yielding composite scores that range from 17 to 102, wherein higher values represent more permissive, lenient, or favorable attitudes toward the utilization of banned performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) and performance-enhancing substances (PES).

Extensive psychometric investigations across international cohorts of elite, collegiate, semi-professional, and recreational competitors have demonstrated robust internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients systematically documented between .71 and .91 across diverse athletic samples and cross-cultural adaptations. Construct, convergent, divergent, and predictive validities have been substantiated through structural equation modeling, implicit association tests, randomized response techniques, and behavioral criterion paradigms investigating actual supplement consumption and self-declared doping offenses. While factor analytic investigations consistently endorse an overarching unidimensional general factor representing explicit doping permissiveness, nuanced contemporary psychometric studies also explore second-order or bifurcated models addressing utilitarian morality and normalization of chemical assistance. This article presents an exhaustive, psychometric exposition of the PEAS, reviewing its historical derivation, psychological underpinnings, theoretical models of health behavior and deviance, psychometric parameters, empirical applications in anti-doping integrity management, and administrative guidelines.

2. Keywords

Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale, PEAS, doping in sport, performance-enhancing drugs, anti-doping, explicit attitudes, sports psychology, psychometrics, World Anti-Doping Agency, athletic morality, social cognitive theory

3. Authors

The primary creator and psychometric developer of the Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale is Andrea Petróczi, PhD, an internationally distinguished behavioral scientist and Professor of Public Health at Kingston University London (United Kingdom) and Research Fellow affiliated with diverse international anti-doping working groups. Dr. Petróczi’s pioneering research program bridges sports science, psychometrics, public health surveillance, social psychology, and regulatory policy, focusing extensively on the etiology of doping behavior, ethical decision-making, implicit social cognition, and nutritional supplement use as a gateway to illicit performance enhancement.

Dr. Petróczi developed and validated the scale in collaboration with notable academic co-investigators, including Eugene Aidman, PhD, an expert in cognitive ergonomics, human performance, and personality architecture who has held senior research and professorial positions across Australian defense and university institutions. Subsequent international validation programs have been expanded by sports psychometricians globally, including substantial cross-cultural validation by Jasem Manouchehri, Farshad Tojari, and Sahar Soltanabadi within Middle Eastern athletic cohorts, alongside independent validation cohorts coordinated through universities across Europe, North America, Oceania, and Asia under research initiatives supported by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

4. Purpose

The central purpose of the Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale (PEAS) is to provide an empirically sound, psychometrically robust, and standardized measurement instrument capable of assessing an individual’s explicit evaluative disposition, cognitive rationalization, and behavioral tolerance regarding performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) and prohibited substances in athletic arenas. Prior to the publication and systematic dissemination of the PEAS, research within sports psychology and anti-doping regulation suffered from fragmented, idiosyncratic, non-standardized ad-hoc surveys that lacked psychometric rigor, theoretical alignment, and cross-study comparability. Researchers routinely utilized single-item assessments, unvalidated questionnaires, or over-simplified binary queries (e.g., “Would you take a banned drug if you were guaranteed not to get caught?”) that triggered profound social desirability bias and failed to capture the multifaceted nuances of moral disengagement and utilitarian justifications.

The PEAS was engineered to bridge this empirical void. In clinical and athletic monitoring contexts, the scale serves as a diagnostic screening tool to identify athletic squads, training academies, and competitive disciplines exhibiting heightened systemic tolerance for chemical ergogenesis. Identifying cohorts with permissive doping attitudes enables sports psychologists, integrity officers, and sports medicine practitioners to deploy early psychosocial and psychoeducational interventions targeting moral reasoning, athletic resilience, and clean-sport identity before cognitive attitudes translate into actionable illicit behavior. The scale provides sport governing bodies, international federations, and national anti-doping organizations (NADOs) with an evidence-based surveillance metric to track macro-level shifts in athlete attitudes longitudinally, evaluating whether anti-doping educational initiatives, policy reforms, or deterrent testing programs effectively modify subjective norms and personal standards.

In theoretical, academic, and epidemiological research settings, the PEAS operates as a critical predictor and mediator variable within complex structural equation models evaluating determinants of athletic deviance. Behavioral scientists utilize the scale to examine how dispositional variables (such as achievement goal orientations, narcissism, perfectionism, and moral disengagement), environmental pressures (such as coach-created motivational climates, commercial incentives, and teammate norms), and behavioral antecedents (such as heavy dietary supplement use) interact to precipitate doping intentions and actual self-reported or biologically verified substance use. By establishing a continuous metric of doping permissiveness, the PEAS enables advanced parametric modeling, multi-group structural comparisons, and meta-analytic syntheses across sports disciplines ranging from track and field, weightlifting, and cycling to team sports and recreational bodybuilding.

5. Psychological Construct

The construct measured by the Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale is operationalized as the explicit attitude toward performance enhancement and doping. In contemporary social psychology, an attitude is conventionally defined as an enduring evaluative judgment or psychological tendency expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor. Within the specific domain of competitive athletics, doping attitude reflects an athlete’s cognitive, affective, and behavioral disposition toward the legitimacy, necessity, ethicality, and social normalization of utilizing prohibited pharmacological, physiological, or technical aids to augment physiological capacity, speed injury rehabilitation, or preserve competitive standing.

Although the PEAS is psychometrically scored as a unidimensional overarching measure of doping permissiveness, the items comprehensively sample several interrelated cognitive and normative domains of the attitude construct:

• Necessity and Inevitability (Fatalistic Normalization): Items within this domain capture the belief that doping represents an inescapable condition of elite modern sport. Statements such as “Doping is necessary to be competitive” (Item 1) and “Doping is an unavoidable part of the competitive sport” (Item 11) assess fatalistic perceptions that natural physiological boundaries preclude victory at elite thresholds, thereby framing PED use not as a personal transgression, but as a non-negotiable professional mandate.
• Moral Justification and Rule Transgression: This conceptual dimension gauges ethical relativism and the erosion of sportsmanship norms. Items like “Doping is not cheating since everyone does it” (Item 2) and “Athletes should not feel guilty about breaking the rules and taking performance-enhancing drugs” (Item 7) evaluate how athletes deactivate internalized guilt, employ the “diffusion of responsibility” heuristic, and justify cheating by invoking widespread assumed non-compliance among competitors.
• Utilitarian Outcome Focus: Represented by statements such as “Only the quality of performance should matter, not the way athletes achieve it” (Item 4), this dimension reflects a Machiavellian teleology wherein the final athletic product, spectacle, or victory superordinates the intrinsic procedural integrity of the competition. The path to victory is deemed irrelevant; outcome attainment alone validates the methodology.
• Instrumental Rationalization and Recovery: Items such as “Athletes often lose time due to injuries and drugs can help to make up the lost time” (Item 3) evaluate functional rationalizations. Athletes often delineate between taking drugs to “cheat beyond normal human capacity” versus taking drugs to “return to baseline” following trauma, using therapeutic recovery as a moral loophole.
• Risk Minimization and Skepticism: Items such as “The risks related to doping are exaggerated” (Item 8) assess the cognitive denial or minimization of biological, physiological, and psychological harms. Athletes who express high permissiveness systematically discount medical warnings, attributing them to paternalistic institutional propaganda.
• Equivalence of Technology and Pharmacology: Captured by “There is no difference between drugs, fiberglass poles, and speedy swimsuits that are all used to enhance performance” (Item 13), this dimension reflects cognitive parity between external engineering artifacts (e.g., advanced shoes, aerodynamic suits, hypoxic chambers) and biochemical alterations, dissolving ethical boundaries between technical and physiological enhancements.
• Normalization of Recreational and Auxiliary Substance Use: Items 6, 10, and 12 probe the instrumental utility of recreational drugs (e.g., alleviating boredom, maintaining competitive motivation, coping with athletic stress), capturing a pervasive broader chemical-coping orientation.
• Institutional Cynicism and Media Deflection: Items 14 and 15 (e.g., “The media blows the doping issue out of proportion”) and Item 17 (“Legalizing performance enhancements would be beneficial for sports”) measure externalized blame, antipathy toward public scrutiny, and endorsement of radical deregulation.

6. Theoretical Framework

The Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale is conceptually grounded in a synthesis of classical social cognitive theories, sociological deviance models, and contemporary sports psychology paradigms. Most prominently, the instrument is anchored within the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) developed by Icek Ajzen, alongside its conceptual predecessor, the Theory of Reasoned Action by Fishbein and Ajzen. According to the TPB, human behavior is immediately guided by behavioral intentions, which are functions of three core determinants: personal attitudes toward the behavior, subjective norms (perceptions of social expectations), and perceived behavioral control. Within this paradigm, the PEAS operationalizes the fundamental attitudinal component. While subjective norms measure whether significant others (e.g., coaches, teammates, sponsors) approve of doping, the PEAS isolates the internal cognitive-affective evaluation of whether doping is advantageous, desirable, excusable, or abhorrent. Empirical structural equation models routinely establish that positive explicit attitudes measured by the PEAS serve as direct catalysts for doping intentions, which mediate actual pharmacological experimentation.

Complementing the TPB is Albert Bandura’s Theory of Moral Disengagement. Bandura posited that individuals typically develop personal moral standards that guide behavior through anticipatory self-condemnation and self-respect. However, through distinct psychosocial mechanisms, these self-regulatory sanctions can be selectively deactivated. The content architecture of the PEAS directly reflects these moral disengagement mechanisms:

• Moral Justification: Recasting deleterious conduct as socially worthy or necessary (PEAS Items 1, 11).
• Euphemistic Labeling and Technological Equivalence: Blurring boundaries between biomedical manipulation and acceptable technical gear (PEAS Item 13).
• Advantageous Comparison: Contrasting doping health hazards against natural athletic trauma (PEAS Item 16: “Health problems related to rigorous training and injuries are just as bad as from doping”).
• Displacement and Diffusion of Responsibility: Rationalizing rule-breaking through systemic competitive pressure or widespread peer deviance (PEAS Items 2, 5).
• Minimizing or Disregarding Consequences: Systematically trivializing medical sequelae (PEAS Item 8).

Furthermore, the scale interfaces with Robert Merton’s Strain Theory and Jay Coakley’s concept of “positive deviance” in elite athletics. Coakley argued that athletic deviance frequently arises not from a rejection of the sports ethic, but from an uncritical, hyper-committed over-conformity to the core tenets of elite athletics: sacrificing everything for the game, accepting no limits, and pursuing victory at all costs. The PEAS captures this hyper-conformist mindset where the extreme pursuit of competitive victory eclipses regulatory obedience.

7. Validity

Psychometric evaluation of the Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale across two decades has established robust construct, convergent, criterion, and discriminant validity across diverse global sports populations. Original scale development programs conducted by Andrea Petróczi systematically filtered extensive candidate item pools through expert panel reviews, exploratory factor analyses, and item-total correlation assessments, yielding the optimized 17-item unidimensional architecture.

Construct and Factorial Validity: Construct validity has been repeatedly substantiated using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) across numerous cultural adaptations, including studies conducted in the United Kingdom, Greece, Italy, Iran, Australia, and the United States. Although fit indices fluctuate across varying athletic cultures, models consistently confirm that a dominant single latent construct explains the shared variance of the 17 items. Comparative studies assessing elite versus non-elite populations have corroborated expected mean differences, showing that athletes embedded in hyper-competitive, high-stakes environments where financial survival is contingent upon victory demonstrate significantly higher latent PEAS scores than recreational athletes, supporting known-groups construct validity.

Convergent and Concurrent Validity: Convergent validity is evidenced by strong, statistically significant correlations between the PEAS and related psychological constructs. PEAS scores correlate positively with measures of moral disengagement in sport (such as the Moral Disengagement in Sport Scale-Short; r typically ranging from .42 to .58), extrinsic athletic motivation, ego-oriented motivational climate, and Machiavellianism. Conversely, PEAS scores correlate negatively with dispositional sportsmanship, intrinsic task motivation, moral identity, and ethical reasoning scores measured via the Defining Issues Test (DIT-2).

Predictive and Criterion Validity: The ultimate benchmark for an attitude scale within anti-doping psychology is its predictive relationship with actual substance utilization. In comprehensive epidemiological investigations employing structural equation modeling (Petróczi, 2007; Petróczi & Aidman, 2009), PEAS scores were demonstrated to be the strongest direct psychological predictor of past and current self-declared doping offenses. Furthermore, longitudinal investigations have documented that elevated baseline PEAS scores prospectively predict an athlete’s transition from clean status to the consumption of prohibited substances or high-risk nutritional supplements (e.g., prohormones, ephedrine analogues). When assessed in conjunction with indirect behavioral measurements, such as the Randomized Response Technique (RRT) and the Unmatched Count Technique (UCT), explicit attitudes captured by the PEAS correlate significantly with latent prevalence estimates of actual illicit ergogenic use.

Discriminant Validity: Discriminant validity has been demonstrated by contrasting PEAS scores with general personality inventories (e.g., Big Five Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Openness), which exhibit near-zero correlations with PEAS (typically r < .15), establishing that the scale captures a distinct, domain-specific socio-cognitive attitude rather than broad personality variance.

8. Reliability

The reliability of the Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale has been extensively documented in peer-reviewed psychometric literature, establishing robust indices of internal consistency and temporal stability. In the authoritative psychometric review conducted by Petróczi and Aidman (2009) examining empirical datasets across multiple athletic sub-populations, the internal consistency of the 17-item PEAS—indexed via Cronbach’s alpha (α)—ranged between .71 and .91, with most large-scale empirical studies reporting alpha coefficients clustering between .82 and .89. These values surpass the recognized .70 threshold for research utilization and comfortably meet the .80 benchmark desired for psychological assessment tools.

In a benchmark structural investigation by Petróczi (2007) involving competitive athletes, the 17-item instrument demonstrated an overall Cronbach’s alpha of .88, with corrected item-total correlations ranging from .32 to .68 across all 17 items. Cross-cultural adaptation studies have mirrored these findings. For example, the Persian version of the PEAS validated by Manouchehri and Tojari (2013) and Soltanabadi, Tojari, and Manouchehri (2014) reported Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of .84 and .87, alongside composite reliability (CR) indices exceeding .85. Similar psychometric evaluations of the Italian adaptation (Lucidi et al., 2008) and Greek adaptations (Barkoukis et al., 2011) confirmed alpha values ranging between .79 and .86.

Temporal Stability (Test-Retest Reliability): Test-retest reliability evaluations over temporal intervals ranging from two to six weeks have demonstrated intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) ranging between .74 and .86 among stable competitive athlete cohorts. These coefficients suggest that explicit attitudes toward doping constitute relatively enduring cognitive orientations rather than transient affective states, while retaining sufficient longitudinal sensitivity to register significant shifts following targeted anti-doping psychoeducational intervention programs.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale has been the subject of extensive psychometric exploration, employing both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). During original scale development (Petróczi, 2006, 2007), initial item pools containing upwards of 40 potential statements were subjected to principal components analysis (PCA) and principal axis factoring with oblimin and varimax rotations. These early explorations revealed that while multi-factor solutions could extract secondary dimensions (e.g., media skepticism, recreational drug utility, competitive necessity), scree plots consistently evidenced a dominant, overarching initial eigenvalue accounting for the overwhelming proportion of common variance, strongly supporting a parsimonious unidimensional model.

Subsequent Confirmatory Factor Analyses (Petróczi & Aidman, 2009) testing the unidimensional 17-item structure across diverse international cohorts have revealed acceptable, though occasionally varied, model fit indices. Standard fit statistics reported in peer-reviewed literature for the single-factor model typically manifest as follows:

• Chi-Square to Degrees of Freedom Ratio (χ²/df): Ranging between 1.85 and 2.95, falling comfortably below the accepted threshold of 3.0.
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Values generally span from .90 to .95 across well-sampled cohorts.
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Documented between .88 and .93.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Coefficients typically range between .045 and .068 (with 90% confidence intervals consistently bounded below .080).
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Documented between .040 and .062.

Standardized factor loadings for the 17 items onto the single latent doping attitude factor are predominantly moderate to high, typically clustering between .40 and .78. Items addressing core moral and competitive imperatives—such as Item 1 (“Doping is necessary to be competitive”), Item 2 (“Doping is not cheating since everyone does it”), and Item 7 (“Athletes should not feel guilty about breaking the rules and taking performance-enhancing drugs”)—consistently demonstrate the highest loadings (λ > .65). In contrast, auxiliary items addressing recreational drugs (e.g., Items 6, 10, 12) or media commentary (Items 14, 15) occasionally yield lower factor loadings (λ ≈ .35–.48) in specific cultural cohorts, leading some researchers (e.g., Morente-Sánchez et al., 2014) to evaluate truncated 8-item or 11-item brief variants. Nevertheless, the canonical 17-item full-form PEAS remains the recognized global standard, as maintaining the complete item pool ensures content coverage across both functional performance enhancement and broader pharmacological normalization.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Test Name: Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale
• Acronym: PEAS
• Author: Andrea Petróczi (with contributions by Eugene Aidman and research collaborators)
• Year of Development: 2006 (formal peer-reviewed validation across 2007–2009)
• Target Population: Competitive athletes (elite, collegiate, adolescent, semi-professional, recreational), coaches, sports scientists, and athletic support personnel
• Administration Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil or computerized questionnaire
• Estimated Completion Time: 5 to 10 minutes
• Number of Items: 17 statements
• Dimensionality: Unidimensional (overall explicit doping attitude score)
• Response Scale: 6-point Likert-type scale with no neutral midpoint:
  • 1 = Strongly disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Slightly disagree
  • 4 = Slightly agree
  • 5 = Agree
  • 6 = Strongly agree
• Scoring Protocol: All 17 items are positively keyed toward doping permissiveness. There are no reverse-coded items. The overall score is calculated as the sum of all item ratings, producing a potential total score range of 17 to 102 (or alternatively, a mean item score ranging from 1.0 to 6.0 by dividing the sum by 17).
• Score Interpretation:
  • 17 – 34 (Mean 1.0 – 2.0): Strongly negative/intolerant attitude toward doping; robust personal commitment to clean sport and strict regulatory adherence.
  • 35 – 51 (Mean 2.1 – 3.0): Moderately negative attitude toward doping; general disapproval with possible isolated moral ambivalence regarding injury recovery or media intrusion.
  • 52 – 68 (Mean 3.1 – 4.0): Equivocal/ambivalent attitude; vulnerability to moral disengagement under high-pressure competitive scenarios.
  • 69 – 85 (Mean 4.1 – 5.0): Moderately permissive/positive attitude toward doping; heightened cognitive acceptance of pharmacological enhancement and rule rationalization.
  • 86 – 102 (Mean 5.1 – 6.0): Highly permissive/favorable attitude toward doping; pervasive moral disengagement, systemic fatalism, and explicit advocacy for performance enhancement.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale was first systematically formulated and disseminated at international conferences in 2006 (Petróczi, 2006), followed by seminal journal publications in 2007 and 2009. The instrument was developed under academic research initiatives dedicated to advancing global anti-doping integrity and clean sport culture.

Copyright and Usage Permissions: The PEAS is categorized as an open-access psychometric instrument for non-commercial, academic, scientific, and educational research purposes. Dr. Andrea Petróczi and the respective academic publishers have made the full 17-item scale freely accessible within the public scientific domain to encourage widespread empirical study and cross-cultural validation. No licensing fee or royalty payment is required for non-commercial academic use. However, researchers, sports organizations, and practitioners utilizing the scale are ethically and professionally expected to properly cite the foundational validation publications (specifically Petróczi, 2007; Petróczi & Aidman, 2009). For commercial deployments, large-scale proprietary athlete tracking systems, or inclusion within fee-charging diagnostic platforms, explicit written authorization must be obtained from the primary developer.

12. References

Barkoukis, V., Lazuras, L., Tsorbatzoudis, H., & Rodafinos, A. (2011). Motivational and social cognitive predictors of doping intentions in elite sports: An integrated approach. Journal of Exercise Science & Fitness, 9(2), 77–83. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1728-869X(12)60002-5

Lucidi, F., Zelli, A., Mallia, L., Grano, C., Russo, P. M., & Violani, C. (2008). The social-cognitive mechanisms regulating adolescents’ use of doping substances. Journal of Sports Sciences, 26(5), 447–456. https://doi.org/10.1080/02640410701579370

Manouchehri, J., & Tojari, F. (2013). Development and validation of instruments to measure doping attitudes and doping beliefs. European Journal of Experimental Biology, 3(2), 183–186.

Morente-Sánchez, J., Femia-Marzo, P., & Zabala, M. (2014). Cross-cultural adaptation and validation of the Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale (PEAS) in Spanish competitive athletes. Journal of Sports Science & Medicine, 13(4), 840–848.

Petróczi, A. (2006). Measuring attitude toward doping: Further evidence for the psychometric properties of the Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale. 14th Congress of the European Association for Sport Management, Nicosia, Cyprus. https://www.easm.net/download/2006/9451e6bbde5c23c7e936f3bf24d65a54.pdf

Petróczi, A. (2007). Attitudes and doping: A structural equation analysis of the relationship between athletes’ attitudes, sport orientation and doping behavior. Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy, 2, Article 34. https://doi.org/10.1186/1747-597X-2-34

Petróczi, A., & Aidman, E. (2009). Measuring explicit attitude toward doping: Review of the psychometric properties of the Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 10(3), 390–396. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2008.11.001

Soltanabadi, S., Tojari, F., & Manouchehri, J. (2014). Validity and reliability of measurement instrument of Doping Attitudes and Doping behavior in Iranian professional athletes team of team sports. Indian Journal of Fundamental and Applied Life Sciences, 4(S4), 280–286.

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)