Opportunity profile: Why do some athletes cheat?

Each year, the World Anti-Doping Agency seeks insights from the social sciences to help bolster its work. Tony Cunningham, the agency’s senior manager for education, speaks to Ben Upton about this grant scheme’s growing ambition.

Tony’s top tips

• Be ambitious: investigate behaviours in a cohort.
• Involve anti-doping practitioners in your bid.
• Consider using frameworks from related fields, but justify why they have been used.
• If you are an early-career researcher, include a more experienced researcher in your team.

The World Anti-Doping Agency’s annual Social Science Research Grants are open to researchers anywhere in the world. Last year, three of the six winners were from UK universities: Essex, Hertfordshire and Leeds Beckett.