Abstract:
Using performance-enhanced drugs in modern sports has been widely debated in international society and becomes a hot topic in sociology of sport.This study, by reviewing 61 articles in IRSS, SSJ and JSSI the three peer-reviewed journals of international sociology of sport during 1988 and 2017, conducts the text analysis and tries to find their research characteristics.The result shows that in the past 30 years, the theories of major western sociological scientists as well as some theoretical models from other social sciences provide important analytical frameworks for researching doping issues.The qualitative studies gradually become the mainstream in the field.The methods for collecting and analyzing materials are applied with integrated ways.Moreover, the characteristics of doping behaviors and attitudes, the doping governance, the relations between sport media and doping, and the doping ethics are especially concentrated on in this field.