Professional football players as role models in smoking prevention

Article Article scientifique Article Professional football players as role models in smoking prevention eng 2021-09-28 2021-10-20 author Calzada Ribalta Gerard 764669 author Cibotto Cédric 0009-0002-7281-5914 751683 author Manetti Julien 751177 author Rudolf Aaron Maria 751153 author Folino David 716285 author Rothen Stéphane 691816 author Thorens Gabriel 0000-0002-3622-9179 88882 Département de psychiatrie (PSYAT) author Zullino Daniele Fabio 649976 Département de psychiatrie (PSYAT) w10006 10.4414/SANP.2021.w10006 2297-6981 https://sanp.ch/article/doi/sanp.2021.w10006 AIM: High-profile athletes are often promoted as role models, being portrayed as providing positive messages such as good health attitudes, which are assumed to be related to their success. As the logic behind using high-profile athletes as role models is also the argument for linking sports performance to not smoking, the objective of the present study was to compare publicly smoking players and non-smoking players with regard to their football performances during the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. METHODS: For each of the 736 players of the 32 teams officially registered for the 2014 FIFA World Cup the following data were collected through the official FIFA database: year of birth, position on the field (goalkeeper, defender, midfielder or forward), number of matches played, number of minutes played, number of goals scored and distance covered. The distance covered per minute played was also calculated. For every player the first 100 pictures on Google Pictures were screened for pictures showing the player smoking. RESULTS: Smokers played an average of 246.7 minutes versus 175.4 minutes for nonsmoking players (t-test = 2.538; df = 734; p = 0.011). The distance covered per minute played was 0.11 for smoking players versus 0.10 for non-smoking players (t-test = 2.820; df = 63.5; p = 0.006). CONCLUSION: The data of this study do not support the use football stars as role models for prevention campaigns, as the smokers appeared to perform better. Future studies should, however, try to control for the celebrity bias. Dewey 616.89 60 Département de psychiatrie 225 false 496 Abus de substances 834 Swiss archives of neurology, psychiatry and psychotherapy 172 5 f13b99dd-7733-4180-828c-bba2b315271f Article (Published version) Public Professional_football_players_as_ro.pdf 617565 application/pdf CC BY-NC-ND-4.0 fa64a52ef7f8ffc4a198024380cd21cb78413fb7257b78d403644b081229e6d3 openAccess Faculté de médecine / Section de médecine clinique / Département de psychiatrie

Title	Published in	Access level	OA Policy	Year	Views	Downloads

Professional football players as role models in smoking prevention	Swiss archives of neurology, psychiatry and psychotherapy			2021	51	672

Archive ouverte UNIGE

Manetti, Julien