Middle and High School Students Education Regarding the Dangers of Anabolic Steroids, By: Jean Dymott, Heidi Suffoletto, and John Leddy

State University of New York at Buffalo

Background

Anabolic steroid use by well-known professional athletes has occurred across a wide range of sports. Due to a significant amount of media attention to these athletes, student-athletes have been exposed to the idea that steroid use is prevalent among high-level athletes. At the time of this study, it is not clear if steroid side effects are known to these students. 

Objectives

To assess middle and high school students' knowledge of the effects, both intended and unintended, of anabolic steroid use. 

Methods

Athletic directors in 13 western New York middle and high schools distributed anonymous surveys to a sample of their students, both athletes and non-athletes, yielding 2,328 surveys eligible for analysis. One-page surveys included demographic information and two open-ended questions assessing knowledge of steroid side effects. All survey data was recorded using Microsoft Excel and analyzed by a statistician. 

Results

Eighty-five percent say they have been made aware of risks of taking steroids, however only 79% could give any example on the open-ended question concerning risks. In addition, 48% gave only one risk in their answer. Thirty-three percent were unsure how likely these side effects were to occur. Self-reporting of having "tried" steroids was 0.7% for females and 3.3% for males, consistent with previous studies. 

Conclusions

Our data suggest a minimal knowledge of steroid side effects among middle and high school-aged students. Our study is the first to use open-ended questions assessing steroid side effect knowledge. This provides new insight, as answer prompts are not used in the questions. Of the answers given, many were quite vague. From this study, we have learned that there is tremendous potential to educate student-athletes to the potential dangers of anabolic steroid use. Emergency medicine affords unique educational opportunities for the subspecialty of sports medicine during emergency department encounters with these students.